Magix Musicmaker 15 audio software

The success of Apple’s Garageband on the Mac has proved there’s a demand for easy-to-use music software that will allow budding young musicians to create their own songs on their home computer.

Musicmaker from Magix attempts to provide a similar set of music tools for the PC, and this latest version includes features aimed at beginners.

The program’s welcome screen allows you to start a new project from scratch, but you can also ask it to play a tutorial video or load one of several demo songs, to give you an idea how the program works.

When you enter the main program interface, you see a series of tracks running across the top half of the screen. This is where you arrange the pre-programmed ‘loops’ and other sounds that will make up your song arrangement. The lower half of the screen is occupied by the Media Pool, which contains the program’s built-in collection of loops and sounds.

The program now allows you to switch into ‘Easy’ mode by pressing a button at the top of the screen. This hides some of the more advanced tools that might confuse new users and displays a large ‘Infobox’ in the bottom-right corner of the screen. When you place the mouse over any tool or button, the Infobox provides a quick explanation of how that tool works.

To make things really easy, there’s a ‘Songmaker’ option that can automatically create a song for you. When you click the Songmaker button in the toolbar it asks you to select a musical style, as well as a selection of instruments to include in the song ­ you can even ask it to add one of its prerecorded vocal tracks too.

The manual has a tendency to throw around jargon such as ‘Midi’ without explaining it clearly, so there’s some room for improvement. However, features such as the Songmaker and Infobox provide a nice, simple introduction to the music-making process.