SPEECH Computers have become quite good at speaking. You can also buy a talking car that tells you when it needs an oil change, a talking bathroom scale that makes cynical comments about how much your weight's gone up since yesterday, and many other talking devices. You can even buy Coke from a talking vending machine that invites you to deposit your coins and then says ``Thank you''. Talking watch Whenever I want to find out the time, I just press a button on my wrist watch, and its computer voice proudly proclaims the time in perfect English. Whenever I get lonely at night and want somebody to talk to me, I just press the watch's button and thrill to the sound of its soothing voice. It also acts as the world's most humane alarm clock. Instead of giving an awful ring, its human voice says, ``Attention, please! It's 7:30AM.'' Then it plays some jazzed up Bach. If I'm still sleepy and ignore the alarm, five minutes later it will say, ``Attention, please! It's 7:35AM. Please hurry.'' It will also subject me to some more Bach. It will keep reminding me every five minutes, until I'm awake enough to turn off the alarm. You can buy the Vox Watch at Radio Shack for $39.95. Reading to the blind The most impressive talking device ever invented is the Kurzweil Reading Machine, which reads books to the blind. It looks like a photocopying machine. Just lay a book on top of the machine, and the machine reads the book to you, even if the book is laid down crookedly and has dirt on it and has multiple columns and photos and uses weird type. When it was invented many years ago, it used to cost $50,000. Then the price dropped to $20,000. Then the price dropped even lower, but it still costs more than the average blind person can afford. To use such a machine, you must either be rich or live near a library owning the machine. Most blind people who are computerized use cheaper devices instead: an IBM PC clone supplemented by a scanner, voice synthesizer, and cheap software. Can computers listen? Though computers are good talkers, they're not good listeners. No computer's been invented yet that will replace your secretary and let you dictate a letter to it. The computer devices currently on the market have tiny vocabularies, require you to pause after every word, and need to be ``trained'' to understand your accent. MUSIC Computerized music is advancing rapidly. Now you can sit down at a portable piano-style keyboard (light enough to carry in one hand), bang out a tune, feed the tune to a computer, and have the computer edit out your errors, play the tune back using the tone qualities of any instrument you wish (or even a whole orchestra), and print the score on paper. Such developments are shaking up the entire music industry. When you watch a TV commercial or movie, the background music that sounds like a beautiful orchestra or band is often produced by just a single person sitting at a computerized music synthesizer. The imitation of orchestral instruments is so exact that even professional musicians can't hear the difference. As a result, whole orchestras of musicians are now unemployed. Music synthesizers come in two categories. One kind's cheap ($25 to $500) and easy to use, but produces sounds that are tinny. The other kind produces beautiful sounds but costs a lot ($500 to $20,000) and is harder to learn to master. Programmers are trying to meld those two categories together. I wish they'd hurry up! Ultimate Music Machine Musicians, programmers, and engineers are working together to create the Ultimate Music Machine, which makes all other musical instruments obsolete. You can buy all its parts at your local computer and music stores, but the software and hardware that connects the parts is awkward. I expect some company will eventually build an assembled version that you just plug into the wall for immediate fun. Part 1: the tone-quality creator The Ultimate Music Machine can imitate all other musical instruments. To make it imitate an instrument, play a few notes of that instrument into the machine's microphone. The machine makes a digital recording of the instrument, analyzes the recording, and stores the analysis on a 3«-inch floppy disk. The machine's analysis is quite sophisticated. For example, it realizes that a violin note has a vibrato (because the violinist's finger wiggles), that each piano note begins with a bang and ends with a hum, and that the piano's bass notes sound ``fatter'' than the treble notes (because the bass notes are made from different kinds of strings). The machine lets you edit the analysis, to create totally new tone qualities, such as ``piolin'' (which is a compromise between a piano and a violin). When you buy the machine, it comes with recordings of the most popular instruments, and lets you add your own and edit them. It also lets you use fundamental waveforms (such as sine waves, square waves, and triangle waves), which act as building blocks for inventing sounds that are wilder. Part 2: the note creator The machine includes a piano-style keyboard (with black and white notes on it). To feed the machine a melody, tap the melody on the keyboard. You can also play chords. The machine notices which notes you strike the hardest, so it records your accents. The machine includes a pitch-bend dial, which you turn to make the notes slide up the scale, like a slide trombone. If you're not good at the keyboard, use the machine's screen instead, which displays a musical staff and lets you move notes onto the staff by using a mouse. You can also use the mouse to edit any errors you made on the keyboard, and to create repetitions and increase the tempo. If you fear mice and keyboards, just sing into the machine's microphone. The machine notices which notes you've sung and records them. If you're too lazy to create a melody or harmony, the machine creates its own. Its built-in computer analyzes your favorite music, notices its rhythms, note transitions, and harmonic structures, and then composes its own music in the same style. Part 3: output The machine plays the editing music through stereo speakers. As the music plays, the complete score moves across the screen, in traditional music notation. The machine also prints the score on paper. Yes, the machine prints a complete score showing how you sang into the mike or tickled the keys! Vendors The Ultimate Music Machine is built from music synthesizers. The most popular synthesizers are made by four Japanese companies: Casio, Roland, Yamaha, and Korg. Their synths cost from $25 to $3000 and contain tiny computers. For extra computing power, attach a Macintosh computer by using a Musical Instrument Digital Interface cable (MIDI cable). To print pretty scores cheaply, add Deluxe Music Construction Set, a Mac program published by Electronics Arts for under $50.