IT WAS WHILE watching a recent edition of Channel 4's Equinox programme that one of the most significant differences between imparting and receiving information became clear to me. More specifically, it was the confusion of reward involved in each role that was clarified. The programme dealt with the use of computers in the classroom and while it left me with no doubt that the advantages could be considerable, there seemed to be a misunderstanding on the part of some of the contributors between the satisfaction they had gained in constructing various programs for students' use, and that which they anticipated the students themselves experiencing in using them.

Someone had constructed a Hyper Card stack around Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. "It's not an easy piece to teach", he explained, but argued that a student having access not only to the music, but to the composer's background, fashions of the period and so on, would find the whole topic not only more enjoyable but more educational. And he may well be right. But what was also evident to me was that he was projecting his own satisfaction in having researched and written the program onto its users.

I could be wrong, of course, but the incident bears an uncomfortable similarity to a number of my own experiences - some of which I expect we share. First my own: the course of the average MT interview involves not only stepping out and comparing notes with a talented musician but carefully researching their work, involvement with, and influence over, other musicians, their contemporaries, their successes, their failures...

In short, there's a lot of work involved aimed at bringing you the most interesting and informative interview we can put in print. Completing such an assignment usually leaves the writer with a rewarding feeling of achievement. Sadly, this is rarely shared by the average reader.

The parallel can be extended to cover a wide variety of activities, but consider this; how much work went into your last demo? If you sent it out on the record company circuit, how much attention do you think it received? How much did it deserve? Will anyone other than yourself ever come to appreciate the subtleties that cost you so much time and effort (not to mention cash)? How many genuinely good pieces of music are overlooked in this way? Maybe some of them are yours.

I suppose the real target of these observations is the society in which we live; the society we've created for ourselves. There are so many people investing so much energy in so many projects that there simply isn't room in our lives to appreciate the efforts of others. We use other people's music as a background to our own activities and expect them to pay attention to our own; we sit in the bar through some band's support slot and demand enthusiastic audiences when we take to the stage; we buy equipment (not only musical), use a handful of the facilities incorporated by the designers and feel unappreciated when the finer points of our own work aren't recognised. Maybe it's just a matter of time before looking and listening come back into fashion. Or maybe we ought to be thinking more carefully about what we put into society and what we take out of it.