This innovative program bridges the gap between music and language and should be a wonderful tool for helping children within the autism spectrum bridge this gap as well.  The ultimate pack for making music and writing song lyrics, it allows the creation of up to three tracks of single note or chord melody lines to compose the music, add lyrics and then use the record feature to record singing along with the music! You even can save the compositions to MIDI and WAV files so that you can burn the songs to a CD!  It doesn't get more motivating than that!  Great for home and school music projects.

Most children in the autism spectrum process music better than language (see the Autism Coach article on this) and the music auditory processing area of the brain located in the right hemisphere of the brain is often an area of strength for children within the autism spectrum that an be used to build language in the  language auditory processing area mirrored in the left hemisphere of the brain. This brilliantly conceived software could be used to help the music processing area of the build language. If the child is non-verbal, the voices of favorite people could be included on the song to teach language through music either the child or adult creates.  The creation and understanding of musical patterns can help to lead to the understanding of patterns of spoken language.

Some Words & Music children will enjoy the ‘Paper’ screen, on which colored strips can be cut, 'glued', stretched, and shrunk to change note length, and moved up/down to change pitch - a unique and powerful way of making music. As confidence grows, they may prefer to edit the notation either here or on the 'Trio' screen. Paper and Trio use identical playback and editing tools, including Insert, Cut, Paste and Copy. The 'Zoom' screen provides an overview of the whole composition/song - it's a great place to discuss musical shapes and repeated patterns.

Words & Music is perfect not just for those who want to get pupils making music (and/or writing songs), but also for developing all-round composition and performance skills. What's more, opportunities for linking Music and Literacy (syllables, rhythm, stresses and intonation of speech, etc.) are limited only by your imagination.

* More than 200 instruments, or optional MIDI
* Major, minor, chromatic, Pentatonic and Blues scales, plus 'DIY' for ragas
* Traditional notation is always visible (and editable)
* Display lyrics and/or note names; use chords or turn them off
* Prints near-professional scores or Paper-style music sheets
* Saves MIDI, MusicXML and WAv files
* Includes simple options & integrated network support
* Pupils can even record themselves singing along!

On the CD is included reference guide, activity ideas and worksheets for teachers and parents.