Dance eJay 5

Despite what the Top 40 may lead you to believe, making music is no simple task. If you can't play an instrument, you'll need plenty of computer expertise and not a small amount of creative ability enters the equation.

That being the case, a program that effectively eliminates all of these prerequisites looks like an aspiring musician's dream come true. That's just what Empire Interactive's eJay range of music-making software offers.

The concept behind Dance eJay has always been the same. The software comes with a selection of samples including bass lines, drum beats, guitar breaks and so on. These aren't mere one-note cuts or chord snippets though.

They are actual musical phrases that are up to several seconds long. The clever part is that they've all been orchestrated so that by and large, they all fit together in terms of musical key and rhythm.

Simply by dragging and dropping samples onto a timeline it's possible to build up a piece of rich, complex music with little effort.

Dance eJay 5 doesn't alter this concept much and perhaps the biggest change is in the samples. There are 5,000 new ones and all are of very high quality.

Quality is a relative term though. Unless you like electronic dance music, they don't offer much variety.

You don't have to rely on the supplied samples. Dance eJay 5 also lets you create your own bass, drum and chord sequences from scratch, and both the pitch and the tempo of anything you compose can be altered.

There's even the option to create synthesised vocals from text you type in but the results are hardly a substitute for a set of vocal chords.

Dance eJay 5 is a fun way to dip your toe into music-making waters. Its dance music-based limitations may prove frustrating, but it's the best software of its type.

Contact: Empire Interactive 020 8492 1030
www.ejay-uk.com Not yet reviewed.