WHAMBO!

By George, an 'Andy marketing release, you're thinking to link rock wonders Wham! with the Music Box software. Iolo Davidson goes Wham! Bam! Thank you Melbourne Hourse and makes a few notes of his own.

FAX BOX
Title: Wham! The Music Box
Publisher: Melbourne House
Price: £9.95

This program comes with five of the faberoony Wham! mega-smashes stored in the Music Box's tune memory. Don't ask me what their squillions of fans would make of a Speccy cover version of Young Guns, though!

If you ever tire of the Dynamic Duo's ditties you can erase them and compose your own, or key in tunes from sheet music. This is what the program's really about so serious musicians or Duranees need not be put off by the Wham! label.

Besides the music editor, with its easy method of on-screen composition, this program gives your Spectrum an extra sound channel. That means you can play two different notes simultaneously, for two part harmony or simple chords. You'll want some method of amplification I get the most from this program, as no software can cure the innately feeble Speccy beeper.

Once you've composed your hit for pinched someone else's) you can save it to tape or microdrive, complete with the machine code routine that plays it, as a block of code for inclusion in you own programs. No mention is made of the copyright situation on the inlay, though, so I've no idea what'd happen if you wanted to use this music in a program for commercial resale.

Terry Bulfib's had a quick hack and informs us that there is 4K of Basic inside, and more importantly, that the loading and saving of tunes is done in Basic. This means that the microdrive Save and Load options will also work on other drives that use microdrive syntax, like the Opus disk or Wafadrives.

What makes it all a doddle to use, and cancels all my previous quibbles us the easy editing. You can play in notes by ear, seeing each key you've pressed marked on both the screen's piano keyboard and the stave. You'll hear it as well and by backspacing you can remove mistakes. You can go through the score note by note, or fast forward through it. Otherwise, just play the tune, all the time with a continual display on the piano keyboard and staves. Plus you can listen to the sound of the notes.

Besides the organ like twin voices, you get a 'bass drum' and three somewhat programmable sound effects based on white noise. You can also alter the playing speed. What you can't do is obtain a printout of the musical score - but since the notation is weird, you won't want to.

First they gave programmers the pop star treatment, now the customers get to be pop stars. I hope all this music doesn't lead you to throw your TV out the hotel window.

MORE MUSICAL INTERLUDES

Producer: Melbourne House
Retail Price: £9.95
Author: Mark Alexander

After the success of Wham, The Music Box, Mark Alexander has vastly improved the sound capabilities, taking full advantage of the sound chip on board the 128. The original version for the 48K machine uses the Beep command split by a routine to create a duophonic effect and has some options for adding percussive noise. Note entry is achieved via the bottom two rows of keys which, in combination with an octave key, gives you a range of about five octaves per voice.

Note values are limited to quavers only, but you can join them together to form longer notes - rests are inserted from the ENTER key. As you enter notes on the second channel you automatically hear the first track along with it, which means that bum notes in a harmony are instantly recognised. Tempo is variable and editing is absurdly simply - just advance through the tune step by step till you hear the offending note, select the channel and overwrite. There is also a looping facility for each channel so that sequences can be set up or repeats of the whole piece can be arranged.

So how does the 128 version improve on this? Plenty, is the answer. The opening turn for the screen display is 'Peter Gunn' in a cleverly designed arrangement that shows off the three channels of sound plus percussion. Each channel can be set to produce a different sound by some rather clever software that allows you to design your own sound envelope. Note entry and editing is very much the same as in the 48K version and the display shows you where you are in the piece as the notes scroll past a fixed point.

Each channel has a window display showing you which sound envelope number it is using complete with a graph of that envelope. It also registers the note number counted from the beginning of the piece. A larger window flashes up the special effects or commands you have specified as they occur during the piece. The effects, assignable to each channel individually, are as follows:

a) altering the envelope volume which will help you to get joined notes sound smoother, getting rid of the rather annoying pulse present in the 48K version.

b) altering the individual levels of the channels so that a good sound balance is possible.

c) an additional looping facility.

d) the ability to make any channel slide up and down in pitch. This can produce very spectacular effects.

The display has a volume meter like a VU meter on a hi-fi. A piano keyboard running across the bottom of the screen shows you where your notes are being played or entered, with a different colour used on the display for each channel. The colour of the screen border can be altered to suit.

From the main menu, apart from the usual load and save options, there are help pages and sections dedicated to defining the sound envelopes. The latter are noise free and produce some pretty good sounds. The envelope editing cleverly uses a set of bar graphs that shape the sound via the arrow keys, each alteration being plotted in an adjoining window. It comes with eight preset sound envelopes so that you are not completely at sea. When transferred to the main display each sound graph is reproduced in miniature in the channel window.

There are also nine preset drum noises that can be varied far more than on the 48K version: a wider choice of frequencies and volumes is available via the envelope editing procedure. Any percussion effect has to be put onto one of the three channels but you can switch from percussion to notes within each channel, and with careful planning the loss of one channel for an instant is not noticeable.

Your homespun masterpieces can be saved to RAM disc as well as cassette. Like the 48K version it has a compiler which produces a machine code routine which lets you put tunes into programs of your own creation.

The accompanying documentation and instructions are all fairly accurate, although the key reference guide needs amending for the 128. For example the 'step back one note' command only worked when SYMBOL SHIFT was held down. CAPS LOCK and P independently allows you to step through the tune event by event (note by note as they occur). But it does list a 'get you started' tune for you to enter, as well as six pre-programmed tunes that put The Music Box through it's paces very successfully, even it some of the tunes are a wee bit inaccurate.

If improvements are to be made, I would like to see some sort of advanced editing whereby defined sections of the tune could be filed away and re-ordered into a song format. Self-created envelopes could also be stored in this way to allow access to the sound parameters more quickly: an envelope file as it were.

If you were only going to buy one music program, then buy The Music Box for the 128. It's a definite winner, and will take a lot of beating.

Publisher: Melbourne House
Price: £9.95
Memory: 48K

We previewed Melbourne House's superb music program last month, and the final version lives up to expectations. Wham! The Music Box is clearly destined to take a place alongside classic utilities such as Tasword II or Art Studio.

The screen displays two staves, which scroll sideways, on which you write the music. The bottom two rows of the keyboard act as a piano keyboard, and all the notes are of a single length. That's not a problem as long as you work out the smallest unit you are going to need and take that as the note size. Longer length notes are simply repetitions of the same note.

The program allows you to write two-part music, with a bass line and treble. Four octaves are available, and extra functions include repeating a set pattern, adding in drum sounds - more like scratching sandpaper, but that's the Spectrum for you - and defining your own white noise effects by moving a cursor over various waveforms and selecting the one you want.

Since the Spectrum can only handle one note at a time, normally, the two-voice music comes as a shock when you first hear it. If you've got Fairlight or Way of the Exploding Fist, those tunes were written with the same routine.

Music can be compiled down to code, stored at any reasonable address, for use in your own programs, and a set of POKEs is given to alter speed, and allow you to play tunes one note at a time so that the music can be interlinked with screen action.

The alleged pop group Wham! has allowed Melbourne House to convert five of their hit singles to the system, and those tunes are recorded after the main program. Whether or not you enjoy Wham! the results certainly show off the power of the program to good advantage.

It is incredibly easy to produce acceptable music from the program. Anybody - absolutely anybody - who writes games or likes mucking about with sound should boogie on down to the stores and buy it.

ZX Spectrum
Melbourne House
Music Utility
£9.95

There used to be one inviolable certainty to cling to in these changing times - the immutable fact that the Spectrum has just one sound channel. But now even this sacrosanct truth has been rudely, and noisily, shattered by this devilish bit of software which gives the Spectrum two sound channels using the original hardware.

Wham - no connection with the George/Ridley duo, you may be relieved to hear - allows you to compose separate bass and melody lines over a four-octave range and even to include vaguely drum-like effects (but not simultaneously with the notes). Notes are entered and displayed on musical staff and, as they are being played, the notes are depicted by dots bouncing around on a piano keyboard.

The hideously named Whampiler allows you to use the tunes you compose to enliven your own programs. The compiled music takes up less than 1K of memory, no matter how complex it is.

One snag is that all the notes have to be the same length, although rests can be inserted between notes and the tempo of a piece can be varied.

W-TJB will probably appeal most to programmers wanting to add music to their graphic masterpieces; as a stand-alone music-making package its staying power is questionable.

MICRO MUSIC

This month we look at WHAM, no, not the group but Melbourne House's much vaunted program for the Spectrum.

Wham! The Music Box, is claimed to be is claimed to be the 'complete sound system for your Spectrum' and as such has a lot to live up to.

The Spectrum has long been noted for its particularly pathetic sound facilities and, apart from a few exceptions - Romantic Robot's Music Typewriter for instance, programs which are based on this feature are doomed to failure. So what has MH produced to entice us?

The answer is a novel and adventurous way of producing (to all intents and purposes) TWO channel sound without any add-on units. No, I couldn't believe it either and loaded in the program with a large dose of scepticism.

The program is supplied with five demonstration songs built in, all by Wham (the group) and very impressive they sound too - well, technically speaking anyway.

Volume is not very loud at the best of times and sound quality on the Spectrum has always been rather dubious, but it is true there is very definitely two channel sound and also, by very clever timing, a rhythmic percussion effect as well.

Even played on an unadorned Spectrum it's way ahead of anything else, but add a sound boost, such as Cheetah's or the Currah Microspeech or the SSL units which output the sound through the TV speaker - or even the DK Tronics amp, and you have a very respectable music machine.

ON TEST

At first I was concerned with the the fact that the instructions only took up six sides of a cassette inlay. I like my instructions to be at idiot level and explained step by step. In fact they are a lesson in brevity and precision. They do use a step by step approach and very quickly and clearly introduce you to using the program.

There is no attempt to teach any music at all, the user is assumed to have a background knowledge or to be willing to experiment. The problem with experimenting is that you get things wrong and need to be continually changing them. The editing facilities of some other programs have been a serious problem but with WHAM you can delete back by one note at a time or overwrite selectively. This makes editing quick and simple.

When the program is first loaded you are faced with the 'main' options menu consisting of:

1. Load a tune.
2. Save a tune.
3. Hear the tune.
4. 'Whampile' the tune.
5. Set tempo.
6. Edit mode.
7. Help page.

All these except (4), are straightforward and I'll go into this one later.

From each of these options you are taken to a screen with its own set of controls and options. These are, on the whole, well prompted and easy to use, and a constant display of status is provided. Music is entered by using the keys CAPS SHIFT to SPACE as a piano keyboard and each press produces a semi-quaver on the staves. You have a range of four octaves which you select by pressing keys 1 to 4.

Notes longer than a semi-quaver are supposedly produced by repeating as many semi-quavers as are required to make up the note. These are played as separate notes to play a quick, staccato semi-quaver trill. To get around this you have to be quite ingenious with the use of rests and tempo techniques.

Other keys which have functions are, (6) to return to the main menu, (7) to erase the whole tune. (9) rewind, (0) step back one note, (Q) replay tune, (W) set repeat marker, (E) bass drum effect, (R) restart, (T) toggle between channels 1 and 2, (O) fast forward, (P) play single note.

PERCUSSION

Drum effects are possible from a simple a simple synthesizer type section. Pressing E places a standard bass drum effect in the music and pressing 8 puts you into 'noise' creation.

Once in this option you have the choice of selecting between seven different waveforms and four durations, these are positioned in the music by the Y, U or I keys.

You have to be very clever indeed to use these options effectively as the Bass drum takes out one note from one channel and the noise takes up a note from both channels. As you can imagine, this can be very effective but you have to be extremely ingenious to use it to its full.

WHAMPILE

This is one of the main reasons why some people will purchase this program. By using this option you can compile a tune in memory and save it to tape.

This saved version can be reloaded and run independently to WHAM and can be incorporated into your own programs to play either note by note as the program operates, or as a one off introduction piece.

This does for sound what the graphics utilities did for title screens or HURG did for DIY games. I am impressed, but I must say that as a serious tool for a musician or composer then it is not really of any real use. However, as a fun program it is brilliant. I took it to a school and let the pupils there try it and, although none had any musical knowledge, it fascinated and entertained them for hours. Finally, as a means of getting impressive sounds and music in your own programs it is invaluable, I may be mistaken, but I'm sure but I heard WHAMPILED music in GYROSCOPE, Melbourne House's latest arcade game.

ZX WAXES MUSICAL WITH A SURVEY OF SOFTWARE PACKAGES FOR THE SPECTRUM.

Melbourne House
£7.95

The program stands up on its own without the Wham! tie up and I have heard music produced on this used in several games, mostly MH's.

The most striking thing about this program is that by clever programming your ears are fooled into hearing two channel sound. Several songs by the duo have been included as demos and pretty impressive they sound.

Of course now the 128 is here the program is a bit outdated due to the AY sound chip now being used (see next review).

Once you've loaded the program a menu appears giving options to Load tune, Save tune, Hear tune, Whampiler, Set tempo, Edit or Help. The instruction insert is a strange mixture of brevity and step by step details. Bits of it were slightly confusing.

Drum effects can be used, but these use both channels so a musical note cannot be played at the same time. This means a fair bit of ingenuity is needed to use the percussion effectively.

The "Whampiler" is a great boon, turning a novelty program into a useful utility. This allows you to save your tune in a form which you can use in your own games.

Note entry is a bit awkward, and needs getting used to. This is not really a program for the musical novice, although such a person could use it successfully, but more a utility for musical computerists or games writers who want the best sounds available in their program.

It is quirky to use, editing is easy though, and this is an important factor, with patience and time you can produce the best music/effects possible on the 48K Spectrum.

I enjoy using it, though dedicated musicians may find its limitations and unusual features off putting. For instance all the notes are entered as semi quavers and longer notes are made up of repeating as many as are required. This means fast single note trills are nearly impossible to do.

Although even a little expression is feasible using the percussion, the end result is still rather robotic.

Screen display is varied, at times clear and simple and at times rather cluttered. The user is well prompted but sometimes careful scrutiny of the screen is needed to find the info you want.

All in a very useful and interesting program, especially if you have an external amp/beep booster attached.