Cant find the program with digitized music?

On the creation of AY or Beeper music, including the packages used to do so.
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Pegaz
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Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by Pegaz »

A couple of weeks ago, I was searching through my Spectrum archive and coming across a program with digitized music of Mike Oldfields great song Moonlight Shadow, from 1983.
I thought I had memorized the name of the program, but now I can't find it.
I know there was no graphics, just a white screen and great music, one of the best digitized tunes I heard on Spectrum.
Does anyone have any idea, what the program is about?
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zxbruno
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by zxbruno »

I don't have the answer, but I'm bumping this topic in hopes of finding out. I'm a fan of digitised stuff on the Speccy, even more when it involves the AY chip.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by Ralf »

It could be some demo. I believe that I could hear it once too but I won't find it, sorry :)

Unfortunately we don't have any practical way to search it in the database.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by R-Tape »

Pegaz wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2019 8:49 pm A couple of weeks ago, I was searching through my Spectrum archive and coming across a program with digitized music of Mike Oldfields great song Moonlight Shadow, from 1983.
I thought I had memorized the name of the program, but now I can't find it.
I know there was no graphics, just a white screen and great music, one of the best digitized tunes I heard on Spectrum.
Does anyone have any idea, what the program is about?
Can you remember much more about it? Country? TAP, SNAP, TRD or SCL? Author?

Newart has a lot of ZX Chip Tunes on disk without any graphics. Might be worth a look: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 10259&pg=1
Ralf wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 8:34 pm Unfortunately we don't have any practical way to search it in the database.
The current search does a lot, but we really need an advanced one with multiple choices (basically the one from Martijn's WoS!). Most of all, I miss a year range search. I live in hope that a coder will volunteer their services, and it's do-able within the current framework!
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by hikoki »

Is this compilation from [mention]Neil Parsons[/mention] ?
https://programbytes48k.wordpress.com/2 ... d-trilogy/
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by R-Tape »

hikoki wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 9:33 pm Is this compilation from @Neil Parsons ?
https://programbytes48k.wordpress.com/2 ... d-trilogy/
Good call. Moonlight Shadow is on the Ommadawn album, but I couldn't find it on Neil's rendition of it. Did I miss it?

Cool tape though, on the Speccy it all has a medieval feel to it.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by Neil Parsons »

Pegaz wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2019 8:49 pm A couple of weeks ago, I was searching through my Spectrum archive and coming across a program with digitized music of Mike Oldfields great song Moonlight Shadow, from 1983.
I thought I had memorized the name of the program, but now I can't find it.
I know there was no graphics, just a white screen and great music, one of the best digitized tunes I heard on Spectrum.
Does anyone have any idea, what the program is about?
Hi,

I remembered at least one Moonlight Shadow's chiptune cover made by MQM Team for their scene demo MQM Demo III: Total Brain Storm. A big one! But it's the only thing I actually know.

I wish I could have done an AY version of myself from Oldfield's hit song, but I didn't. I just made other MO covers (Tubular Bells, Hergest Ridge, Ommadawn at full; Islands' songs and Tattoo from TBII). I've developed more stuff and everybody can find them here.

Cheers
Last edited by Neil Parsons on Sun Nov 17, 2019 12:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by Neil Parsons »

R-Tape wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 9:55 pm
hikoki wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 9:33 pm Is this compilation from @Neil Parsons ?
https://programbytes48k.wordpress.com/2 ... d-trilogy/
Good call. Moonlight Shadow is on the Ommadawn album, but I couldn't find it on Neil's rendition of it. Did I miss it?

Cool tape though, on the Speccy it all has a medieval feel to it.
Not Ommadawn but Crises album. :mrgreen:
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by hikoki »

Neil Parsons wrote: Sun Nov 17, 2019 11:59 am I've developed more stuff and everybody can find them here.
I've noticed that your Aquanoid reduced version is not in the archive yet
http://www.elmundodelspectrum.com/aquan ... l-parsons/

Cheers
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by Pegaz »

Finally, after two months of searching I found it !!!
The file is called Normal Life, I don't know anything about it, but the music is absolutely beautiful.
Enjoy. :)

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fi ... 2652916518
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by ZXDunny »

Pegaz wrote: Mon Nov 18, 2019 11:40 am Finally, after two months of searching I found it !!!
The file is called Normal Life, I don't know anything about it, but the music is absolutely beautiful.
Enjoy. :)

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fi ... 2652916518
Sounds like a .mod file using samples down-sampled from ST-01 :D
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Pegaz
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by Pegaz »

Is that good or bad? ;)
Either way, if there were more Spectrum tunes like this, I'd love to hear it.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by ZXDunny »

Pegaz wrote: Mon Nov 18, 2019 7:35 pm Is that good or bad? ;)
Either way, if there were more Spectrum tunes like this, I'd love to hear it.
There aren't many. It's likely using sampled instruments in a soundtracker-like system from the sounds of it. Seems to be an original composition at least, there's no Amiga mods that sound quite like it.

I think the Bicie demo has one in a similar vein, but it's not Mike Oldfield :)
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by Ast A. Moore »

There’s Instrument, a sampler (in TR-DOS format) which has similar sounds. It comes with quite a few demo songs (and clunky navigation, which requires that you swap disks to load the necessary instruments for each song). I don’t think it’s been used extensively outside of demos, though. It’s neat, though. Check it out.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by djnzx48 »

It looks like Sample Tracker, or something using the same playback routine. This is one example of using different AY ports along with the out ($fd), a instruction, so that the BC register doesn't have to change between register selection and data writes.

There are a lot more tunes here, but not all are for the AY chip.

Before you found the program, I thought you were referring to music that had simply been digitised and not recreated using a tracker. MQM 6 includes a good example of digitised music.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by druellan »

After the Border Effects feature group, I was thinking that a "digital sound effects" feature group might also make sense, there are plenty of games and apps with 48k and 128k digital voices and sound effects.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by Pegaz »

ZXDunny wrote: Mon Nov 18, 2019 8:17 pm There aren't many. It's likely using sampled instruments in a soundtracker-like system from the sounds of it. Seems to be an original composition at least, there's no Amiga mods that sound quite like it.

I think the Bicie demo has one in a similar vein, but it's not Mike Oldfield :)
I tried that demo and I have to say that the Oldfield song is far better. :)
If we need to look for competition, we can find it easier in some of the great 1-bit beeper tunes, such as the last theme in MrBeep's great "1-bit attack" demo.
Btw, that "Bicie" demo has also one 1-bit beeper tune, but for some reason I can't get sound at all, just border effects.
I tried it on the latest SpecEmu in both 128/48k mode, so I have no doubt about the quality of the emulation.
Probably I overlooked something, does anyone know how to play this tune?
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by ZXDunny »

Pegaz wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 1:48 pm
ZXDunny wrote: Mon Nov 18, 2019 8:17 pm There aren't many. It's likely using sampled instruments in a soundtracker-like system from the sounds of it. Seems to be an original composition at least, there's no Amiga mods that sound quite like it.

I think the Bicie demo has one in a similar vein, but it's not Mike Oldfield :)
I tried that demo and I have to say that the Oldfield song is far better. :)
If we need to look for competition, we can find it easier in some of the great 1-bit beeper tunes, such as the last theme in MrBeep's great "1-bit attack" demo.
Btw, that "Bicie" demo has also one 1-bit beeper tune, but for some reason I can't get sound at all, just border effects.
I tried it on the latest SpecEmu in both 128/48k mode, so I have no doubt about the quality of the emulation.
Probably I overlooked something, does anyone know how to play this tune?
Last time I tried, it worked fine on my +2A from the covertape itself. No idea why it might fail under emulation.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by Woodster »

ZXDunny wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 1:50 pm Last time I tried, it worked fine on my +2A from the covertape itself. No idea why it might fail under emulation.
So the +2A (and presumably the 128K too then) produce audible MIC output through the TV speaker with the Beeper bit off? The reason for the silence in SpecEmu is that it's stated in the FAQ (or at least somewhere :p) that the MIC output alone can't drive the speaker but can be used for a slight increase in volume when used with the Beeper bit.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by Woodster »

Pegaz wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 1:48 pm I tried it on the latest SpecEmu in both 128/48k mode, so I have no doubt about the quality of the emulation.
Probably I overlooked something, does anyone know how to play this tune?
You could use the "Boost saving tone" option in the Tape options to boost the MIC output to an audible level. It might be a bit loud though!
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by Pegaz »

Great, it's working now. :)
Thanks Woody.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by ZXDunny »

Woodster wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 2:48 pm
ZXDunny wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 1:50 pm Last time I tried, it worked fine on my +2A from the covertape itself. No idea why it might fail under emulation.
So the +2A (and presumably the 128K too then) produce audible MIC output through the TV speaker with the Beeper bit off? The reason for the silence in SpecEmu is that it's stated in the FAQ (or at least somewhere :p) that the MIC output alone can't drive the speaker but can be used for a slight increase in volume when used with the Beeper bit.
Had the demo back in the early 90s (possibly 92 or 93) along with a +2a (black, not the one I have now) on a 14" colour portable. Bicie demo definitely produced beeper sound on the second option - I recall the AY sound being better than the beeper.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by Ast A. Moore »

Pegaz wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 1:48 pm Btw, that "Bicie" demo has also one 1-bit beeper tune, but for some reason I can't get sound at all, just border effects.
On a real Spectrum (all models), toggling either the MIC or the EAR bit of Port #FE will energize/de-energize the beeper. On 16K/48K Spectrums, it is physically the same pin of the ULA; on 128K machines, there are two separate ULA pins that are either shorted together (128K/+2) or connected via resistors and decoupling capacitors (+2A/+3).

Not all emulators follow this behavior, preferring instead to generate sound only if Bit 4 (EAR) is toggled. I tried the demo on zxsp, RVM, and SpecIde, and they all generated sound on the beeper without problems. Fuse and SpectREM didn’t.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by Neil Parsons »

hikoki wrote: Sun Nov 17, 2019 12:51 pm
Neil Parsons wrote: Sun Nov 17, 2019 11:59 am I've developed more stuff and everybody can find them here.
I've noticed that your Aquanoid reduced version is not in the archive yet
http://www.elmundodelspectrum.com/aquan ... l-parsons/

Cheers
It's a simplified version of the original game with a different map I made earlier as a test, prior to next and definite development of Aquanoids.

Whenever I can, I'll provide the TZX file of this Aquanoids Redux.
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Re: Cant find the program with digitized music?

Post by R-Tape »

Neil Parsons wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2019 6:13 pm
hikoki wrote: Sun Nov 17, 2019 12:51 pm I've noticed that your Aquanoid reduced version is not in the archive yet
http://www.elmundodelspectrum.com/aquan ... l-parsons/

Cheers
It's a simplified version of the original game with a different map I made earlier as a test, prior to next and definite development of Aquanoids.

Whenever I can, I'll provide the TZX file of this Aquanoids Redux.
Thanks hik and Neil. I looked into this, but I couldn't work out exactly what the reduced version was, and if it should be added to the archive. I also didn't add the main version of Aquanoids, I think because it was a commercial release at the time. Should I add both to the archive?
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