PRIVATE LIVES : Visions of Musical Mice, Video Sugarplums : CD-ROM: Listen up! There’s a growing body of compelling classical, pop, jazz and world beat sounds to click your mouse to nowadays.

OK, so you just got this big, imposing multimedia computer that was supposed to cut your workload in half.

And it did. Now what are you going to do with the extra time?

Play a game? Sure. There are thousands, almost every one an effective time killer.

Log on to cyberspace? Yes, indeed. CompuServ, Prodigy, America Online and lesser-known services provide colorful new electronic definitions of the town square. And pushing on through to the Internet literally opens up the world via your computer screen.

But suppose you’re a music fan, and what you really want is to get more in touch with jazz or rock or classical music? No problem. CD-ROM is the medium that can take you there. With increasing momentum in 1994, music of every sort has begun to appear on CD-ROMs. Here’s a sampling of what’s available, with prices generally from $29.95 to $79.95:

Classical

As far back as 1990, the Voyager Co. produced an interactive look at Beethoven. That title was the pathfinder for what has become Microsoft’s growing Multimedia Music Series. The collection now includes “Mozart: The Dissonant Quartet,” “Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring,” “Schubert: The Trout Quintet” and “Beethoven: The Ninth Symphony.”

Each title could easily serve as a music student’s tutorial, with combinations of graphics, sound and text that describe, in illuminating detail, structural aspects of the music. But this is not dull, didactic stuff. At any given point, the listener has the opportunity to click on to an instant musical illustration of, say, the unusual harmonies that open the Mozart quartet or the feral rhythms of the Stravinsky work. Another mouse click describes different instruments (with audio examples), and another provides illustrated biographical information.

There is a potentially far greater array of sounds in “Microsoft Musical Instruments,” which examines more than 200 instruments from around the world, as well as several dozen different musical assemblages. The disc is structured into four sections: “Families of Instruments,” “Instruments of the World,” “Musical Ensembles” and “A-Z of Instruments.” Ever wonder what a zampogna is? Or a pipa ? Wonder no more. A few quick mouse clicks will provide full-color pictures and audio examples of, respectively, an Italian bagpipe and a Chinese lute.

Opera buffs are well-served by “The Viking Opera Guide” (Penguin Books/Attica Cybernetics). More than three hours of musical excerpts and the complete text of a 1,300-page opera reference book are packed into this disc. The excerpted performances are more informative than remarkable, but the inclusion of a timeline, a world map and a search facility that permits inquiries on title, librettist, composer and so forth makes the guide an invaluable tool for even the casual opera listener.

Pop

The hits are coming fast, from Voyager’s CD-ROM rendering of the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” (which includes the complete movie, with uncut scenes and an original script) to more recent showcase outings by Peter Gabriel, David Bowie and Prince.

Gabriel’s “Xplora 1: Peter Gabriel’s Secret World” (Interplay Productions) has only been available for Macintosh computers since its release earlier this year. A Windows version, expected in January, will make the pioneering collection of videos, biographical material and interactive sessions available to a much larger audience. Typically, “Xplora 1” reflects Gabriel’s thoughtful approach to his music. It sets a high pop music standard for the imaginative integration of sound, music and data in interactive media.

“Jump: The David Bowie Interactive CD-ROM” (ION) fascinates primarily for the opportunity it provides to play around with new video and audio mixes of the title tune. Other segments contain interview clips with Bowie, while the primary interactivity involves video game-like movements through 3-D hallways, rooms and so forth, accompanied by not especially interesting visual effects. Not exactly up to the level one might have expected from an artist who would appear to be a natural for the far-reaching creative potential of CD-ROM.

Prince’s “Interactive” (Graphix Zone) takes the form of a game, in which the viewer has various tasks--like collecting jewels--to do before moving on to the next one. Along the way, there are opportunities to sing-along, karaoke style, with KISS, to play a video-clip card game, do song mixes, check out interviews with Little Richard and Eric Clapton and take a close look at the Purple One’s wardrobe. It’s all good fun and, like the Gabriel CD-ROM, a model of interactive media production.

Other pop-oriented CD-ROMs include: “Heart: 20 Years of Rock & Roll” (New CD Music Show), a huge collage of videos, interviews, songs and photos that sometimes entertains and sometimes offers far more than one could ever care to know about the veteran rock group; “Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music, 25th Anniversary” (Time Warner Interactive), yet another tour through the now-venerable and already overchronicled event, with documentary footage, videos, retrospective interviews from performers such as John Sebastian and eight tunes from Janis Joplin, the Who, Richie Havens, et al.; “Grammy Awards CD-ROM” (Media Vision), which includes video clips of award performances, backstage footage and a database of Grammy info.

Jazz, World Music

“Jazz: A Multimedia History” (Compton’s New Media), released in 1992, was an early and moderately successful effort to provide a pictures-and-sound overview of the art. It features brief visual clips of Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and others, as well as a rare segment of a performance by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Discography and bio sections include some point-and-click highlighting of names and terms that generate popup explanations.

Compton also is distributing three similar collections devoted to the work of individual performers: “Jazz Series: Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Billie Holiday.” Each takes a similar tack via the use of text slides, video and sound clips and bio and discographical databases. There are, in addition, as many as a dozen straight-ahead audio tracks. Nothing is especially fancy, and the production does not remotely approach the high-powered interactivity of the pop CD-ROMs listed above, but the combination of informative data and entertaining audio and video makes for useful additions to anyone’s jazz library.

“World Beat” (Medio Multimedia) is a generally excellent survey of world music, with one serious flaw. An interactive video segment, complete with narrative voice-over, includes point-and-click opportunities to hear a variety of musical sounds and styles. Another, text-oriented segment contains essays examining various world musics, and a third adds the complete data from the discographical “All-Music Guide.”

So far, so good. But Medio falters with a “music studio” in which four-bar clips of such styles as rai , soca , and calypso are notated on screen; minimal mixing and editing opportunities are provided and the output can be exported to a MIDI device. Unfortunately, the sounds heard by the average listener are generated by the computer’s sound card, not by the CD.

This means that the quality of what you hear will be determined totally by the quality of the sound card in your computer. Not a wise decision by Medio, compounded by the fact that, in the review copy, the music studio’s metronome pointing device was consistently late by at least one full beat.*