Music Conservatory

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money.
Review: Music Conservatory is incredibly bad. First, before it can run it told me that it doesn't support large fonts. This forced me to change the fonts on my system and reboot. Small fonts look bad on my system, but I was forced to change to small fonts. Voyetra has lost half of its audience before the program can even start.

When the program starts the first thing that you notice is that the screens are extremely difficult to read. Some of the screens are absolutely impossible to read, at least on my machine. They tried to make the screens look old like crinkled paper, but some of the screens are so bad that you have to blindly click to see what happens. I'm running in 32 bit true color. But I tried 256 color and it looks just as bad.

I had hoped to be able to hear how each instrument sounds. But only about one quarter of the instruments have any audio attached to them.

Most of the instruments have a 'video' button. But when I click the video button, the screen puts up some text and then immediately overwrites the text with the original image. Perhaps on a very slow computer this would be long enough for you to read the text.

You can click your way through all of the information on the disk in a few minutes. If you buy this product you will use it once and never again.

This application was obviously designed for very old slow systems.

Rating:
Summary: This educator loves the Music Conservatory!
Review: Sorry to read that the reviewer before me had such a bad experience with the Music Conservatory! I encountered none of the mentioned problems, as a matter of fact I have been impressed with the easy installation. Once installed, navigation is easy and logical; my piano students have no problems using the program by themselves, without much tutoring. Everything is easy to read, graphics are good, audio is good, video clips are short but interesting, they work perfectly fine on my computer! I especially like the fact that every musical style period, every instrument and every musical term is not only explained but also pronounced (correctly!) - really helpful for music lovers who haven't had the good luck of a formal musical education. There is so much information here: history, lots of instruments (some of which were new to me), composers, detailed biographies, musical terms, etc. Most of the instruments do have audio and/or video examples.
Music lovers and music teachers alike will find this program useful and enjoyable. Some of my elementary-age students disliked that it is not truly "interactive" in the sense that the program would "respond" to you. However, it is a wonderful encyclopedia with a wealth of information and options to cater to your particular interest. Definitely worth the money!
One last comment: under system requirements, my CD lists, "MIDI compatible keyboard recommended" - I am not sure what for, I have never used my keyboard with this program; you most certainly can run it without a MIDI compatible keyboard.