Songworks+II

General Information: Title: Songworks II: polyphonic Publisher: Ars Nova Copyright: 1998 Platform: Apple Peripherals: Keyboard, Mouse, Speakers, MIDI instrument is supported but not required Grade/Age: Most suitable for high school students, but can be used by any grade up to adults Type of Class: General Music, or even instrumental music

General Use: Is a composer's workshop, and also can be used as a tool to teach non-composers to explore music.

Teacher Support: Owner's Manual

Instructional content: National Standards Addressed Standard 4. Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines. Standard 5: Reading and Notating Music

Instructional Design and Pedagogical Soundness: The basic use of this program is to notate music, but the most interesting feature is that you can compose melodies, and then have Songworks create an accompaniment for you. Also, the program can generate a melody from scratch. This is an interesting tool to use with young students in beginning theory, or even young children in general music.

Record Keeping: This program can save your files to disk easily in various formats (AIFF, MIDI, PICT).

Overall Evaluation: There are a few neat tools that come with this software, but this is definitely an obsolete interface. The composition setup is much like Finale with the ability to use speedy and simple entry, but without the presence of any palette for articulation, or dynamics the ease of using this product is much harder than the basically user-friendly Sibelius and Finale. If one studied the Owner's Manual and remember the commands you probably could make some compositions with it, but the practicality of using this software in a classroom would be very difficult.

Rating: 1/2 *

Bryan Hannaford 4/8/2008