eJay Music Director Gold

There is no shortage of music-making software in the eJay stable at present, but Music Director Gold has pretensions of professional music production rather than simple fun.

It comes with 9,000 audio clips, so you can start playing straight away and arrange them into a song.

After you've built your song, you can apply effects such as reverb and distortion to fine tune your composition and edit the sound clips without using a separate program.

For all this, it never really gets off the ground as a serious studio package.

The automatic time stretching to ensure samples are the correct length for the tempo and automatic pitch correction of sounds are excellent tools for the beginner.

Unfortunately, though, the 9,000 pre-recorded sounds are awfully cheesy. You can always use your own sound files, but for recording live instruments and voices there are plenty of more flexible alternatives.

The Video Tracker aspect is a fun diversion but don't expect a call from MTV asking for broadcast rights.

Music Director Gold has the functionality you would expect in a professional software synthesizer at a low price.

It's best suited to musical beginners as more ambitious musicians may find it restrictive.

DETAILS

Price: £30
Contact: eJay 0118 934 6150
www.ejay.co.uk