A belated Happy New Year to you all. It's been a while, my apologies.

I recently acquired an iPad, a great gift which is much appreciated, and as you might expect I immediately obtained a music creation app for it. So now I can make arrangements and write music on three platforms, an iMac, a laptop PC and my new iPad. You'd think I now have it covered wouldn't you, but despite their brilliance at handling notation, tabs and chords - and more - I've discovered they all lack the spontaneity most of us need when ideas come into our heads.

A customer once told me how frustrating it can be to pick out a set of chords making sense of a piece which may have dogged him for years, but by the time the computer is switched on and the music notation app launched parts are forgotten, particularly nuances which made the difference between being a bit close and being near perfect. Having had the same thing happen to me I know just how upsetting that can be.

Despite concerns when I first launched ...