PROGRAM PITSTOP Your Sinclair, December 1991 He's YS's answer to Tom Jones. He's got the scores on the doors and the daffodils in the window box. Ladies and gentlemen, let's have a big round of applause for JONATHAN DAVIES ... I've never had much luck with cameras. That's why I thought I'd better take this opportunity to point out that I don't look anything like any of the photos that have appeared in Pitstop over the years, least of all that one over there. (Fortunately I seem to be shrouded in darkness, as Andy O's no Lord Lucan. Or was he the one who disappeared?) Well, that and the fact that I was a bit stuck for anything else to put in this month's intro, as usual. Pitstop's temporarily down to one program this month, but what a corker it is. Jim Newall's 48K Music System will send tingles down the spine of anyone fed up with their Speccy's weedy Beep command. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 48K SOUND SYSTEM by Jim Newall Given the choice between a 128K and a 48K Spectrum, I'd plump for the latter any day. That compact case, the easy on the fingers rubber keys, the straightforward and nippy Basic editor, that endearing keyword system, games that multi-load in convenient chunks - it all adds up to a great package in my opinion, miles better than those grey, impersonal Amstrad offerings. Our rubber-keyed buddy's just got one small problem: the sound's crap. Getting it to play a tune involves an endless string of Beep commands, and hours spent working out the right numbers to go with each one. And if you do ever get the thing finished, it tends to sound more like a digital watch alarm than the symphonic masterpiece you'd originally intended. But fret no longer. Here, and not a minute too soon, is Jim Newall with his 48K Sound System, which aims to give your 48K pretty much the same musical capabilities as the 128K. As well as giving you two-channel polyphonic sound (not quite the 128K's three, but as near as dammit), it also pulls off a convincing impression of the 128K's Play command, so to play a tune you simply bung all the names and lengths of the notes into a string and let the program do the rest. You've also got full control over the length of the notes, the speed of the tune and a range of sound effects, and repeats are easy to accomplish. First things first though. Type in the Basic section, which mainly consists of a demo, and save it onto a blank tape. Then type in the Hex Loader and use it to enter the hex listing. Remember that when entering hex, only type the pairs of characters a line at a time, and not the spaces between them which are there to make the text easier to read. Save the code thus produced after the Basic, and then reset and reload the whole thing. If all goes well you should hear Jim's rather splendid demo. By now you're probably itching to have a crack at a tune of your own. It couldn't be simpler! (That's the whole point, after all.) What you need to do is type LET a$="", where the contents of a$ are plucked from the following list: a-g or A-G - pitch of note within current octave (N.B. pitch for channel A must be followed immediately by pitch for channel B) $ - use after a note to flatten it # - use after a note to sharpen it O - followed by channel (A or B) and then a number (1-3) sets octave 1-9 - sets length of notes & - denotes a rest T - followed by a number from 1-12 sets the tempo () - enclose a phrase to be repeated ! - sound FX - follow by three letters and/or numbers for a variety of sound effects (N.B. uses both sound channels) The numbers representing note lengths are as follows: 1 - semi quaver 2 - dotted semi quaver 3 - quaver 4 - dotted quaver 5 - crotchet 6 - dotted crotchet 7 - minim 8 - dotted minim 9 - semibreve It might sound a bit technical, but basically a crotchet is one beat long, a minim is two beats, a semibreve is four beats, a quaver is half a beat and a semi quaver is a quarter of a beat, and adding a dot adds on half as much again. The length of a beat depends on the tempo you've set. The best way to get to grips with what's going on is probably to take a gander at the demo, which explores all the various features. Once everything's set up, RANDOMIZE USR 62000 to play it. If you come up with any particularly spectacular tunes, please don't send them to me.