Mastering Music Version 4 Review - Music In Action, July 2003
  An Answer to Prayer?
Just the thought of integrating a midi sequencer, audio recorder/editor with structured lessons and aural training exercises into a single software package is enough to make a technology-focussed music educator salivate. While there are excellent individual products available that do each of these extremely well, Datasonics has come up with a winner in their Mastering Music program.

Covering the music syllabus for ages 11-18, Mastering Music has been developed in consultation with classroom music teachers. It provides activities from simple composition to full-blown multimedia presentation, with the bonus of detailed built-in video tutorials to assist. And no piano keyboard skills are required.
  For those with keyboard ability, MIDI keyboard recording and playback is user-friendly with all the editing windows one comes to expect from top-drawer software manufacturers. Want a published version? MM formats and prints full conductor scores, individual parts, chord charts – it even prints manuscript!
  The music lessons have been structured into three learning areas -
  • Composing (experimenting with creating and editing music)
  • Publishing (learning about writing and printing notation)
  • Musicianship (exercises that help to understand the language of music)
The Lesson Order Guide and a Year Level Guide guide you through these lessons. The Mastering Music products can also be mapped to your music curriculum.
  Mastering Music can be run as a stand alone, or on a school network. It can be used in a computer lab or classroom without midi keyboards. However you teach music, MM is a comprehensive teaching, performance and publishing resource. Musicianship can be tested and results printed out. I had a lot of fun with the inputting of chords and their inversions. MM allows immediate audio feedback by simply pressing computer numbers 1-9, relevant to the exercise number.
  Similarly the composing activities that get you selecting, changing and identifying instruments in arrangements are great fun, and maximise potential both aurally and technologically, as the program guides you through.
  In considering this software I evaluated it from many different angles, assuming that at some stage I would come across something that did not work; was not appropriate or that I didn’t like. Not so. The one glitch I had turned out to be a momentary problem with my equipment. In my view this software is a winner.
  If you haven’t seen this program yet, check it out. It’ll change your life!
  Mark Sadler
SoundHouse™ Coordinator
Scitech Discovery Centre, Perth