Sinclair ZX80 / ZX81 / Z88 Forums

I have played around with the ZXPand-AY for sound, tones, ect. I'm waiting on a ZXPand+ and would like to know if anything exists to create game music or songs with the AY-3-8910 clone built into the ZXPand and other ZON-X sound units?

I'm not trying to be rude but have you searched the forum hmm? To be fair I understand that a person is at a complete disadvantage if they haven't been active in this part of the hobby so please take my light hearted ragging in the spirit in which it is meant

You need to search for the word 'soundtracker' - this is the composition software that is used on the zeddy. There are equivalents on those bigger computers that we all use day-to-day and one person in particular hosts the most valuable resource in this respect - Sergey Bulba.

At this point I expect a Moggy to appear. 1.. 2.. 3...

You'll have to count a bit higher, it's a bit early for that cat

Mark

Thank you. I wasn't sure what exactly to search on. I will relook again.

YOU CALLED?

Please find enclosed for your listening pleasure the following...

A nice shiny folder called BIGSTC.

Why BIGSTC?

Because there are 1513 song files in it along with an STC file player created by forum Guru Andy Rea and butchered by myself so as to be a pseudo jukebox.

To use LOAD "JUK" then run. If left to its own devices it will play a fixed length of each tune then move on to the next. I found that a vast majority of AY stuff wasn't written with any sort of ending in mind and loops endlessly so the BASIC controlled increment do-hickey helps with that. Also to move on to the next song should you desire to do so keep key "N( ext)" pressed or key "P(revious)" for to go to the previous tune.

Do not try to run this from the Zxpand Commander as it wets itself when confronted with this many files, ( HA! That told you Charlie R.)
There may be the odd corrupt file in there in which case just move onto the next.

And lastly sorry no song titles (player limitation at the time which I lack the talent to correct) but no great loss as most of them made no sense anyway and in a lot of cases were fairly profane in nature so C'est la vie as they say in Rotherham.

If You are interested in creating anything original then the tracker (thanks again Andy Rea)is highly recommended.


Enjoy!!

(PS Mark is fat and smells of wee )


EDIT For Charlie.

Just for wotsits and giggles I used Andy's player in Eighty One And the normally duff AY seems ER OK!!! Has someone been having a shufty perchance?

Version 1.4 on Win 7 64 bit for reference.

@Moggy, play a tune on eightyone for a while it's okay then goes squiffy for a short bit befirw aortingits self out and been okay again. For a while nefore going squiffy again... least that's my experience, I was gonna look at the code, as far as i got was deciding that because it tries to time when ay changes account with respect to clock cycles passed i this TV frame it seems to go out of sync.... but honesyly I'm only taking an educated guess from my limited understanding of the code.

Good call Andy, got as far as song 3 then, just as you described, it trips over itself.

Never mind still got SZ-81 the only emulator that can handle your players and tracker.

Moggy, thanks for making huge STC file archive available, appreciated. Here's my first attempt at batch decompiling them back to SNG files (first 500, a few bad apples missing). I'll see if I can refine the process, including retaining the date stamping from original STC files. I need to try them out on real AY hardware, EigthyOne emulator trips up a little on AY emulation.

PS. It's not a ZX81 program, just a small QL SuperBASIC program.

Many Many thanks for this,Dave will try them out on real kit and report back.

Tried a dozen or so songs on real zeddy and have to say yessss! A resounding success.

Excellent work Dave for which I'm truly grateful.

One of the things which put a lot of people off AY song composition when first starting is sample/pattern creation.
Thanks to to your efforts anyone thinking of dabbling with AY can now look at these songs break them down and see how how things like drum, bass and other instruments can be created then assembled into songs of their own.

Again excellent work which hopefully will inspire others to create new music.