Computers tend to be pretty versatile, and nowadays they're finding more musical applications than anyone would have thought possible 10 or even five years ago. This all by way of a pathetically inadequate justification of the fact that this month's Musical Micro doesn't have a set theme — there's just too much news on all parts of the computer music front to keep to ourselves!

For a start, there seems to have been a resurgence of use of the Apple micro, which for some time looked like losing out to the much cheaper and more accessible Commodore 64. But the Apple's always been a big favourite in the States, and companies with an eye on market size still tend to develop new musical systems with the Apple in mind. The very promising trend is that more and more of these systems are subsequently turning up in Commodore 64 versions as well.

Take the Polywriter by Passport. The company have been successful in the States for some time, mainly dueto their Apple-based Soundchaser synth, but distribution of their software is only now taking off in the UK courtesy of the Japanese company Rittor.

Polywriter is one of the best justifications for anybody to start using computers for their music. It allows you to enter music in real time from a MIDI synth in any one to eight formats — Piano, Treble followed by Piano, Choral, Full Orchestral and so on, and then transcribes and prints the music with stunning accuracy on any graphics capable dot-matrix printer. If you do want to make some changes, or if Polywriter has made a mistake (highly unlikely!) there's a comprehensive editing facility, and you can even type in lyrics between the staves.

Polywriter copes with a score of any complexity from the simple two staves of the piano to a full conductor's copy orchestra score with individual parts transposed for every orchestral instrument — all printed in the right order, from piccolo to contrabass! The applications of this package can be stunning — you can now turn out scores for string sections even if you can't write a note of music, you can produce perfect printed copies yourself instead of a mucky pencil-and-bungy effort, and you can even keep MU session string players (the grumpiest men alive, if you ask Heaven 17 for instance) as happy as can be expected — as long as you remember to tear the perforated printer sheets apart for them.

But there's more to come. Passport also produce MIDI/4, a four-channel real time MIDI sequencer package, and their new Polywriter Utilities package allows you to transfer MIDI/4 files to Polywriter and vice versa. In other words, you can compose very complex multi-synthesizer pieces, play them back 'live', edit them, commit them to tape, then print them out with any form of score from Piano to Full Orchestra.

The even better news is that the Commodore 64 version of MIDI/4 is with us now and a version of Polywriter is due soon, so hopefully the utilities package will follow and all this power will be on offer to users of a very inexpensive system. At the time of writing the C64 is plummeting in price — it may even be discontinued — so micro/discdrive/monitor/printer systems are going to be available for under £400 as compared to the Apple's minimum £800 or so. You can contact Passport via Rittor on a London number, (Contact Details).

Back to the C64 and cheaper systems later, but there are more new packages for the Apple to consider first. The Italian company LEMI (nothing to do with Motorhead) have worked closely with Sequential Circuits and come up with some handy packages for their synths and others, together with a MIDI interface for the Apple. The first of these 'Future Shock' packages is an Editing system for the Prophet 600, which gives you a visual display of parameter values on the computer screen and allows you to alter sounds, store them and recall them in vast quantities and at great speed. Much better than using tape dumps, this package shows that at least one company is paying attention to the neglected but deeply wonderful 600.

The next package works for any MIDI synth — it's a Real time Sequencer with 12 tracks, autocorrect and metronome function which again works through LEMI's interface. You can loop and merge tracks, and the package has some chaining facilities — although it's not the most powerful compositional tool in the world it may be all you need in the way of sequencers if you already own an Apple.

The third LEMI package is for the Yamaha DX7 only, and predictably enough it's an Editing/Library system. There are lots of these about, from Sound Design, Rosetti/Jellinghaus, SIEL, EMR and others, but again if you already have an Apple the LEMI package will do the job for you. Being able to store DX7 files on floppy disks rather than on those expensive RAM cartridges has been known to make a lot of difference in the eyes of some potential purchasers. Information on LEMI from Computer Music Studios, (Contact Details).

If you want to escape from the worlds of Commodore and Apple, and indeed if you already have an 'odd' computer like a Research Machines Z80 or an Atari (okay, Atari's not exactly odd, but have you tried getting a MIDI interface for one?) you'll be glad to hear about the MIDIC interface from Hinton Instruments. Graham Hinton was a designer for EMS synths and, in fact, put together leadline and polysynth designs for HH as follow-ups to their ill-fated digital piano, but these were never produced. The MIDIC seems set for a brighter future, since it's basically an RS232-to-MIDI interface. Almost every computer in the world has an RS232 option — it's one of the computer communication standards which inspired MIDI in the first place — and so the MIDIC allows you to use virtually any computer as a MIDI controller.

The first issue MIDIC is one for real computer buffs, since it doesn't come with any software and you'll have to write your own before getting a squeak out of your computer-controlled synths. This may not be as difficult as it sounds — note commands can in fact be produced with a couple of phrases in BASIC — but obviously most musicians will go for the issue 2 MIDIC, which comes with a software sequencer/composition package.

Remember, to run MIDIC all you need to do is to make sure your computer can cope with RS232, and this is possible even on the humble Spectrum using the Sinclair Interface 1. Hinton Instruments can be contacted at (Contact Details).

Coming a little downmarket, Commodore have just introduced some more packages compatible with their Music Mate keyboard for the 64. The Music Mate is one of the more interesting budget computer music add-ons — it's a miniature keyboard which fits over the top of the 64's keys and allows its sound chip to be played as a monophonic or three-note polyphonic synth — and some Music Mate packages can transmit to MIDI.

The latest releases are teaching/rehearsal/playback packages for various styles of music — everything from the Beatles to Beethoven, in fact. The computer can play the pieces by itself, or cue you to play them on the Music Mate keyboard. Some of the sounds which can be produced by synthesizer-type packages for the Music Mate are quite acceptable recording-wise, although the C64's sound output is a little noisy, but anybody who already has the 64 should certainly buy a Music Mate keyboard and one or two software packages — it's fun! February's Frankfurt show also premiered a low-band monophonic sound sampler, which isn't intended to be studio quality but which is a handy little toy. Information on this and the other Music Mate products from Music Sales, (Contact Details).

Sound Design Studios have been successfully selling a DX7 Editor/Library package for some time, and showed it at the first convention of the DX/CX Owners' Club in London in March. The advantage of this package is that since it uses no clock or tape sync signals, it's been possible to write it to work on virtually any interface. These would include the SIEL, Rosetti/Jellinghaus and XRI models, and almost certainly the Hinton unit as well, and again the package must make the DX7 more attractive since it reduces the cost of storing sounds, giving the potential of using cassette (very slow but very cheap) or disc (more expensive but devastatingly efficient, even at the speeds at which Commodore's 1541 disc drive chugs along). Contact Sound Design Studios at (Contact Details).

One of our favourite micro music systems is Greengate's Apple-based DS3, a four-voice polyphonic sampler-sequencer which seems to be getting everywhere nowadays. Suffice it to say that the latest software updates for the system allow it to loop sounds at any point, so that you can sustains sampled sound for as long as you hold a key down; to enter looped sounds into the polyphonic sequencer page with any duration; and to vary the rates of the metronome and the external sync pulse detector independently. Many wonderful things are on the way for the DS3 — we can hope for dynamically-sensitive MIDI later in the year, and many more facilities so secret that to mention them here would make all the keys fall off my word processor. Contact Greengate at (Contact Details).

That's about all we've got space for in this month's Musical Micro roundup, and we haven't covered half of the developments in the budget end of the market, nor any of the developments right at the top such as the Apple interface packages for the Kurzweil and Ensoniq Mirage. Maybe next time?