So far, the only program that can play MIDI files is the Palm III's own Date Book program those seven built-in alarm sounds are actually little MIDI files. The world awaits some enterprising road coder to write a program that can harness this new built-in technology. (Do it, and I'll send you a free copy of "PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide." How's that for incentive, programmers of the world?)

PocketSynth for songwriters
Fortunately, not all music software is nonexistent at this moment. As I mentioned in last month's column, PocketSynth, for example, is a terrific little songwriter's tool that lets you record and play back single-line melodies. You specify the pitch by tapping piano keys and the rhythm by choosing from a row of note values (quarter note, half note, dot, etc.). The program, shown in Figure A, uses its own textual notation for recording your melody: C22, for example, means to play the note C in the second octave for a quarter note but all of this is generated automatically. It's useful to understand the notation, though, in case you want to compose a longer masterpiece by simply writing into, say, the Memo Pad.

FIGURE A

PocketSynth is the perfect musician's friend during airport layovers.

Don't have the patience to scrawl down your own little melodies? Then visit the Pilot Entertainment Zone at http://www.fidalgo.net/~ram/index.html for plenty of ready-to-play PocketSynth documents. They come as Doc files; you're supposed to copy the textual music information out of the Doc file, switch to PocketSynth, and paste it into the Compose area.

What earned PocketSynth a place in my Palm III's precious memory, however, is a crucial little side feature that any conductor or instrumentalist will wind up using constantly: the Metronome. It turns the PalmPilot into a beeping, flashing electronic metronome. It can even accent the downbeat of each measure, no matter what the meter, and you can turn off the sound if you want. As any musician can tell you, electronic metronomes not nearly as versatile cost about $50 at the local music shop.

If you repeatedly tap the plastic Scroll Up button at the bottom of the PalmPilot while using PocketSynth's metronome mode, an amazing thing happens: the program actually calculates your tempo, displaying the numerical This feature alone adds another $50 to the cost of standalone electronic metronomes.

Metronome and Tuning Fork
Metronome, shown with Tuning Fork in Figure B, is similar to PocketSynth's Metronome feature, but has two bonuses: a big, easy-to-use, idiotproof interface (including a scroll bar to adjust the tempo), and a readout of the musical marking (such as Allegro or Andante) that corresponds to the current tempo setting. Drag the scroll bar all the way to the bottom, you learn that you're playing Mucha too slow-issimo! Metronome lets you turn on the visual flashing and the audio beeping simultaneously, but lacks PocketSynth's accented downbeat, selectable beep pitch, and auto-tempo calculator. Also install Tuning Fork, which plays the standard tuning pitch A-440 (or A-442, or whatever your orchestra settles on) at your command, and you've avoided buying yet another piece of music-store electronics.