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1. 4 MACHINE i E THE COMPLETE HOME COMPUTER MUSIC SYSTEM SPECTRUM KN GUID Wen engine r i AH RAM Electronics and Flare Technology thank you for choosing one of our products we hope that you have as much fun using The Music Machine as we did designing and building it About RAM RAM Electronics are manufacturers of a wide range of computer peripherals Perhaps they are best known to you for their successful Spectrum Turbo joystick interface If you want to know more about their other Spectrum hardware just look out for their adverts in the home computer press or drop them a line at the address below About Flare All of the people who work for Flare used to work for Sinclair Research so is it any wonder that The Music Machine which Flare designed is so good Look out for future exciting products from this team Please remember to complete and return the guarantee card which is enclosed with The Music Machine Not only will doing this help you see your rights as a purchaser on the card but it will enable us to keep you informed of additions to the range of Music Machine software from time to time Thank you Whilst we have made every effort to ensure that the contents of this manual are accurate we reserve the right to make hardware and software improvements from time to time 1986 RAM Electronics Fleet Ltd 1986 Flare Technology Ltd RAM Electronics Fleet Ltd Unit 16 Redfields Industrial P2. Channel selection is straightforward from the MIDI screen menu and you can assign any of the sixteen channels to any stream you want 4 5 The effects box echo and reverberation Echo and reverberation effects are generated via a simple variable delay line You will hear markedly different effects by listening either through your headphones or an amplifier The length of the delay that you can use is dependent on the amount of free RAM if you have stored a number of samples there will be less space to alot to the delay effect To maximise the delay you should delete all resident samples The delay time is displayed in a screen panel in millliseconds Using headphones you can faze yourself by trying to speak coherently into the microphone Alternatively with an amplifier and speakers connected you will find that you can generate some pretty startling effects as the delayed signal is regenerated via the speakers and microphone Be warned that at high sound levels you can generate feedback howls By experimenting with the length of the delay the microphone level slider and the amplifier output volume you should be able to produce a wide range of strange noises 4 6 Recording and replaying your compositions Loading and saving is an extremely simple affair The options available to you on selecting Load save are self explanatory You can save the data parts of the program either with the program or separately The advan
3. A This question would be easier to answer if it asked what The Machine cannot do It can do ALL of the following The Machine can act as a two voice synthesiser By using the computer keyboard it can play both simple notes and complex sounds Effects can be based on the sound of a piano or an electric guitar or a trombone in fact it can be made to sound similar to any musical instrument you care to name You can even make it sound like your own voice try N n n n nineteen for example or a dog barking or a police car or a window breaking Any noise that can be picked up by microphone can be played back at different pitches by the computer Eight sounds are supplied on the software cassette with The Machine and this User Manual tells you how to make others The machine can be used to make drum sounds You can play up to three drums simultaneously from a selection of eight If you don t like i i i any of the percussion sounds supplied you can use your own Perhaps you would rather replace the tom tom with a telephone ring Simple You can compose songs from individual bars of music You can edit bars on the screen and merge them with bars from other tunes to make new songs You can build up a library of tunes record and save sounds and instruments and record and save drum sounds and rhythms The Music Machine can be used as a digital delay box Play music or speak through the microphone and you will be able to
4. Motorola Data Sheet 1100 ms 500 kHz 20 uS 19 444 samples per second 20 Hz to 9 5 KHz 2mV RMS into 50 kOhms 15mW RMS into 15 Ohms 450 mV RMS 42 dB 35 MIDI The only MIDI facilities provided as standard with The Music Machine are the ability to control internal or external note on or note off events In most cases the action of turning a note on or off requires the transmission of three bytes Note on event 1001nnnn NOTE ON control byte nnnn is a four bit number corresponding to the MIDI channel number 0000 is Channel 1 0001 is Channel 2 and 1111 is Channel 16 for example Oppppppp Pitch value 0010 0000 is middle C Ovvvvvvv Velocity value The Music Machine can only recognise velocity 0 which is in effect NOTE OFF or another value for note on There are no facilities for volume control and so quite reasonably it is ignored Note off event 1000nnnn NOTE OFF control byte Oppppppp Pitch value of the note to be turned off Ovvvvvvv After touch velocity ignored Drum Pitch In common with other drum machines each drum has a note number unfortunately different machines use different numbers The Music Machine uses the following note numbers Middle C 1 c 2 D 3 and so on If you wish to change those values to suit your drum machine you can POKE the following locations with the note value that you want to send to MIDI Sample 1 is associated with 8187 hex sample 2 with 8188 hex a
5. On the reverse side of the tape is an audio track that you can play through a tape recorder in order to hear what The Machine can do We hope to bring you other clever and sophisticated software in the future Q Is there anything else like the Music Machine available for the Spectrum A Some suppliers sell peripherals that do one or two things that the Machine does but you can t easily use lots of their peripherals together And even if you could you would have to spend about three times as much 2 PLUGGING EVERYTHING TOGETHER Because The Music Machine can do so many things we have provided you with a range of sockets into which you can plug various pieces of equipment However before you start sticking plugs into sockets you must connect The Music Machine to your Spectrum If you have never used a Spectrum before then please read your ZX Spectrum User Guide before going any further 2 1 Connecting The Music Machine to your Spectrum Although it is not absolutely necessary we recommend that you unplug the TV and cassette leads from your Spectrum before you start This will make things easier for you when you assemble your music system However you MUST disconnect the power lead from your computer and remove any peripherals from the bus before you start Did you know that the most common way of blowing up computers and peripherals is by plugging and unplugging them while the power supply is connected Don t ruin
6. Roe Eia ui a nn une Eda tai pana eS III I wi aa o a RN ag ad a aaa cun ENE ee ni is Or mna sos ITOG Ia it ih m n um SI IS e ndhik ind Woe fue amarr NG 1 a I F T t4 Figure 9 The Drum Editor Writing your own rhythms is straightforward wherever there is a beat planted on a horizontal line then the sample associated with that line will sound when the rhythm is played There are several similarities with the tune editor described in section 4 1 2 of this manual and these are as follows The tempo may be changed to any value between 60 and 240 beats per minute The lyrics editor enables you to describe each bar with a meaningful name The time signature may have a value of 8 12 or 16 and denotes the number of beats per bar The bar number panel is used both to create new bars and edit existing ones As an example of how to create a drum rhythm first select a time signature of 16 and a slow tempo of 120 beats per minute Insert a bass drum line of one drum beat every fourth space starting with the first space along the line Add a sound like a hi hat every second and third space Add a tom tom every fourth space starting with the third Now add sounds that take your fancy elsewhere in the bar but don t forget that you can only play three samples simultaneously Now you can change the tempo to suit your mood Once you have compose
7. alter the delay rate short or long echoes for example of the sounds as they come through your amplifier s loudspeaker If you have a MIDI synthesiser keyboard you can plug this into The Machine in order to send and receive MIDI data This means that your own sounds and effects can be played by The Machine by hitting keys on the synthesiser keyboard Also sounds produced by The Machine can be mixed with the synthesiser s own voices It is possible to send notes from The Machine to the MIDI keyboard or because several MIDI devices can be plugged in simultaneously some other MIDI peripheral The Machine enables songs created with the screen editor to generate MIDI data and will allow you to play MIDI together with your drum rhythms At the same time as The Machine sends songs to the synthesiser and plays the drums you can play accompaniments on the keyboard Q What can I plug into The Machine A The Machine has the following connectors Spectrum bus connector An audio out phono socket for connection to your hi fi An earphone socket so that you can use your personal stereo headphones A socket into which you plug the supplied microphone for capturing sounds MIDI in out and through for hooking up MIDI devices such as synthesisers or sequencers Q What will the software let me do A All of the things described above Example bars songs sounds and rhythms are supplied with the tape in program form
8. in one the top half is for external playing In particular the bottom half is relevant to what happens when data is sent to a particular output whether this be drums or music sent to the ear phono or MIDI sockets Note that you can define which of the 16 MIDI channels both receive and tramsmit data You have complete freedom over where you send the Music Machine s drum and musical signals Channels A B and C correspond to external drums or music internal drums and internal music respectively each may be assigned to any MIDI channel Note that the software will not allow you to map both drums and music onto the earphone or phono outputs of The Music Machine You can only play drums OR music through these outputs and not both simultaneously Please see section 4 4 2 To allow a MIDI synthesiser to play a Music Machine voice select the MIDI channel you want to use channel zero is the omni mode that can receive from all channels and select eXternal If music is mapped onto the MIDI channel in the lower half of the MIDI screen key 5 or 6 your synthesiser will play a resident sample If drums are mapped onto the MIDI channel key 2 or 3 the complete sample set will map onto consecutive sets of keys You might wish to play some pretty advanced musical compositions using the MIDI keyboard store them edit them and play them back later At the moment the software we supply takes up a great deal of the available RAM
9. minutes for the main program to load after which you will see the Main Menu screen shown in Figure 2 If you cannot get either the title screen or the Main Menu to load do not despair Many Spectrum owners use cassette players that sometimes cause difficulties when loading programs This doesn t of course apply to Plus 2 computers If you do have problems make sure that only the ear socket on the mmhhmmhmmh Main Menu FUFUA Pray miai LecHo Coad save Dune editor Bar editor c cuma ame editor E eas ic Figure 2 First screen of Main program Main Menu computer is connected to the player wind the tape back to the beginning adjust the cassette player volume level slightly and try to load the program again See your Spectrum User Guide for more help Or if you have a Spectrum 128 then use the built in volume level tester 10 3 GETTING STARTED QUICKLY Now that you ve got everything plugged together you probably want to start making sounds playing songs and playing the drums straight away That s what this Chapter is for When you ve tried all the things described here you can spend a bit of time later on reading the detailed descriptions of what The Music Machine can do in Chapter 4 What You ve opened the manual at this page without reading Chapter 2 That s OK if you already know how to connect everything together but you really must read the warnings about electricity i
10. two voices simultaneously from the piano keyboard this can be done using the bar and tune editors 4 4 Playing using an external keyboard To connect a MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface keyboard to the Music Machine you should plug appropriate DIN cables into 27 28 the MIDI IN and MIDI OUT ports of both devices As you would expect IN on one device should be connected to OUT on the other and vice versa Amnon MICE eso awit flexternat RARARARARAN external RAAARARANAH ease a Le a Germs GD mfinmh mmiuninmnL Pn AATU pusi gail a Ga hane 1 chance ill lear Figure 10 The Midi Screen You are now free to do several things a You may play any captured sample held in the Spectrum s memory from the MIDI keyboard over its full musical range b You may send composed tunes to the MIDI synthesiser and play either the captured samples or any of the voices that your MIDI device might already hold or both simultaneously c Using the microphone you may capture any of the MIDI keyboard s voices and edit them using the sample editor d You may switch between voices on your MIDI keyboard to simulate different instruments e Using a MIDI synthesiser you may play two Music Machine notes simultaneously whereas this can t be done directly from the computer s keyboard Figure 10 shows the MIDI screen The important thing to note about this screen is that it is actually two screens
11. your computer system before you ve had a chance to use your terrific Music Machine Here we go a With all leads disconnected from your Spectrum gently push The Music Machine onto the computer s edge connector If you are using Microdrives with your Music Machine then plug Interface 1 into the computer before you plug in The Machine Look at the User Guide if you aren t sure where the edge connector is It is obvious which way up everything goes and in any case it is impossible to connect The Music Machine s box upside down b Plug the leads from your cassette player not necessary with the Spectrum Plus 2 of course and your TV set into the computer c Finally plug in the lead from the power supply Note that this fits through the hole in the Music Machine s box d Switch on the power to the TV and then switch on the Spectrum s power supply You should now get the standard Spectrum copyright message screen If you don t get this screen switch off the power supply disconnect the lead from the computer remove The Music Machine then try the computer by itself If the copyright message screen still does not appear then you may not have plugged everything in and switched on properly or the TV might need tuning in See your Spectrum User Guide You are now ready to plug other leads in Note again that if you want to use the Microdrives with The Music Machine Interface 1 should be plugged in
12. a sub set of a tune In other words a tune comprises one or more bars Obviously enough you use the Bar Editor to compose a short piece of music Tune this is a compilation of separate bars Once you have composed a number of bars you can string them together in any order you want using the Tune Editor to form your song minnmmnmmfmmmm Bar editor mmmmmmmmhin Eiss Euit tune Editor Figure 7 The Bar Editor 20 Select the Bar editor from the Main Menu and you will see the screen shown in Figure 7 The major part of the screen is set aside for your music composition and consists of a conventional pair of staves for treble and bass clefs Each stave is set of horizontal parallel lines the upper is called the treble clef and the lower is called the bass clef Time Signature and Tempo You may change the Time Signature and the Tempo of the music at any time but note that any bar already displayed on the screen will be lost if you change the time signature after the music is composed The time signature dictates the number of beats to the bar and may have a value of 8 12 or 16 whilst the Tempo indicates the rate at which the bar is played The figure associated with the tempo is the number of beats per minute and may be any value in the range of 60 to 240 If you want to plant sixteen notes on a stave then you should select a time signature of si
13. and we just have not had the space to provide you with these latter facilities Please write and let us know what you want to do with your Music Machine and we will try to take account of your needs with future developments 29 30 4 4 1 MIDI in out and through The MIDI IN and MIDI OUT sockets on The Music Machine conform to the MIDI standard The MIDI THROUGH socket is used for daisy chaining devices that conform to the MIDI standard The instructions supplied with whatever it is that you wish to connect should give you more information about assigning masters and slaves As The Music Machine conforms to the MIDI standard you can of course connect up to 16 Spectrums together and orchestrate them If you are fortunate enough to own a MIDI sequencer you can use this as the master device for controlling say an external keyboard an external drum synth AND your Music Machine The world of MIDI is large and fairly complicated without knowing what devices you are going to plug together it is very difficult for us to provide you with detailed instructions Suffice to say whatever you are plugging in should come with its own instruction manual to help you 4 4 2 Combining tunes and drums You have just read that it is not possible to direct drum and music outputs to the headphone or phono sockets simultaneously However you can use your MIDI keyboard to play the music whilst The Music Machine plays the drum rhythm in synchronisation
14. are trademarks of Amstrad Consumer Electronics PLC and Sinclair Research Ltd
15. ark Redfield Lane Church Crookham Aldershot Hants GU13 ORE CONTENTS 0 CAN T WAIT TO TRY IT HUH Ag AN cy For the experienced only 1 INTRODUCTION ajaa a aga ea aaa aaa aana sen L What The Music Machine can do 2 PLUGGING EVERYTHING TOGETHER sakaki ewan S How not to get your wires crossed 2 1 Connecting The Music Machine to your Spectrum 2 2 Plugging in The Music Machine and an amplifier or headphones where to put your microphone 2 3 Loading the software from tape 3 GETTING STARTED QUICKLY 000 pawanan JO How to start making sounds before reading the rest of this manual 3 1 Playing the sounds rhythms and songs supplied on the software cassette i 3 2 Some quick experiments for making your own sounds 4 DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS OF WHAT DOES WHAT 18 How to get your sounds tunes and songs together 4 1 Playing using the Spectrum keyboard 4 1 1 The bar editor 4 1 2 The tune editor 4 2 The drum machine 4 2 1 The rhythm editor 4 3 Recording real life sounds 4 3 1 Editing captured sounds 4 3 2 The two voice synthesiser 44 Playing using an external keyboard 4 4 1 MIDI in out and through 4 4 2 Combining tunes and drums 4 5 The effects box echo and reverberation 4 6 Recording and replaying your compositions 4 6 1 Cassette and Microdrive storage TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION OF THE 0000000a0000 MUSIC MACHINE What you can and can t expect it to do 5 1 Tech
16. between your computer and The Machine See section 4 6 1 of this manual for more about using Microdrives Please remember the golden rule ALWAYS UNPLUG THE POWER SUPPLY LEAD BEFORE ADDING OR REMOVING PERIPHERALS THAT USE THE EDGE CONNECTOR 2 2 Plugging in The Music Machine and an amp phones mic In order to hear the fabulous quality of the sound produced by The Music Machine we have supplied you with both an amplifier socket and a headphone socket Figure 1 shows you the position of the phono socket which carries the audio output signals Into this can be plugged a lead to your hi fi amplifier or maybe a guitar amplifier Because there are so many different amplifier plugs and sockets on the market we have not been able to supply leads that will suit everybody s equipment However it should not be difficult for you to get an appropriate lead from either your local hi fi supplier or an electrical shop IF YOU ARE IN ANY DOUBT AT ALL ABOUT WHAT TO DO GET HELP FROM AN ADULT OR A SPECIALIST NEVER FOOL AROUND WITH ELECTRICITY AS IT CAN KILL YOU Remember that we cannot be held responsible for any dangerous things that you do Please be careful Before you connect your hi fi to The Music Machine turn the volume right down on the amplifier plug the lead into a spare socket probably marked AUX or Auxillary and select the appropriate input on the amplifier s controls If you are using a guitar or PA amp it should b
17. d several bars of different rhythms you can use the tune editor to string them together and play them If you have forgotten how to use the tune editor read section 4 1 2 above 4 3 Recording real life sounds Before you try the examples in this section of the manual delete all of the resident samples Quit dElete select 2 The microphone supplied with the Music Machine can be used for capturing sounds from virtually any source Both quiet and loud sounds can be captured you will need to adjust the level control and maybe the distance of the microphone from the source to get the effect that you want Select sampleR to bring up the screen shown in Figure 6 The level meter on this screen behaves in the same way as do bar meters on 25 26 modern cassette decks The louder the sound source the higher is the reading on the level meter The bar colour changes from green to yellow at 12 dB and from yellow to red at 0 dB You will find by experiment which combination of slider position on the top of the Music Machine s case and volume level of the source give the best results Start by setting the slider to a position that corresponds to a screen reading averaging 6 dB speaking into the microphone is probably the easiest way to experiment When you have found a suitable level select Automatic get ready to speak press Trigger and say Testing testing Press Play to see what it
18. e obvious which socket you should use but again don t forget to turn the volume down LEVEL CONTROL MIDI THROUGH MIDI OUT a lsa QOO p aana NGNE eae 7 HEADPHONE AUDIO OUT SOCKET MICROPHONE SOCKET SOCKET Figure 1 Music Machine Connector details If plugging The Machine into an amplifier is too much like hard work right now then why not use a pair of personal stereo headphones Simply plug these into the headphone socket shown in Figure 1 Finally plug the supplied microphone into the small jack socket shown in Figure 1 Make a mental note of the position of the gain control this is a bit like a volume control on the top of The Music Machine as you will need to use this as soon as you start experimenting with sounds Don t worry about the three DIN sockets marked MIDI in out and through for the time being We ll come back to these later 2 3 Loading the software from the tape Almost ready now As soon as you ve loaded the program you can begin your music making a Place the cassette in your player with side A uppermost b Rewind the tape to the beginning of side A c Use the standard LOAD technique for 48k and Spectrum computers or select the LOAD option from the menu on the Spectrum 128 and Plus 2 If you get stuck read your Spectrum User Guide If you see The Music Machine title screen appear on your TV you will know that all is well You should wait several
19. e Main Menu select sampleR You will see the screen shown in Figure 6 It might look complicated but it is really very simple Notice how the coloured bar resembles the recording level display on most modern hi fi cassette decks Well that s exactly what it is a level meter gg Sampler FARARARANANA Triaser jj iaasr III weal yA oe ade 6 Ssmpie al Name SyNTH Automatic manual Manual Feary Figure 6 The Sampler E 16 When you are using the microphone with The Machine to capture noises just like a recording the level meter of the sampler will respond to the loudness of the noise Try this With the Manual panel on the Sampler screen highlighted say a few words into the microphone and see how the level meter moves from left to right The louder you speak the further right the meter moves If you have to shout in order to get the meter to read higher than the point marked Trigger you should adjust the slider on top of The Music Machine s case see Figure 1 to see where this slider is positioned You have found the ideal position for the slider when as you speak into the microphone the screen level meter just goes into the red bar marked 0dB and above OK when you ve set the level of the slider so that the meter just goes into the red bar when you speak we can capture your voice This can be done manually or a
20. e clock signal for the ACIA and the ZN449 is provided by a ceramic oscillator The incoming signal from the microphone amplifier is sampled to an 8 bit resolution at a rate of 19 444 thousand samples per second This yields an analogue bandwidth of approximately 9 5 KHz which is in fact the cutoff frequency of the filters All of the devices on The Music Machine data bus are accessible to the Spectrum within its IO space ACIA transactions must use 16 bit IO instructions the converters are accessible via 8 bit IO instructions IO Map ADC START xxDF hex Reading or writing to this port will start analogue to digital conversion ADC READ xx BF hex read only The contents of the A to D can be read via this port Note that the A to D must have been started at least 20 uS before this port is read DAC WRITE INTER PT SEL ACIA satus ACIA data read ACIA control ACIA data write xx 9F hex write only xx 5F hex write only x 27F hex read only x 37F hex read only x 07F hex write only x 17F hex write only Sampled data capacity Clock frequency A to D conversion time Sampling frequency Sampling bandwidth Input sensitivity Headphone output Amplifier phono output Signal to noise ratio Date can be written to the DAC via this port Writing 01 to this port disables internal Spectrum interrupts and replaces the IRQ signal from the ACIA Writing 0 restores normality See
21. e tape so you won tlose them forever Select Quit then dElete Press 1 to delete one sample and when asked Which sample type in 6 and press ENTER You have now made room for your echo murano Drums Rr Eray Sorel piano farce giter Figure 5 The Drum Machine Quit back to the Main Menu and select ecHo Press Play and as you speak into the microphone what comes out of the amplifier is exactly the same but delayed You will get even more extreme effects if the volume control of your amplifier is turned up because the sound from the amplifier is then mixed in and delayed too You can make some quite startling sounds using this technique but don t turn the volume up too loud or you ll get feedback howls 3 2 Some quick experiments for making your own sounds You plugged the microphone in some time ago and have so far used it to delay your voice let s use it creatively now mg We mentioned earlier that you can capture your own sounds and play them back in a sort of musical way through The Music Machine Any sound that can be picked up strongly enough by the microphone as long as that sound is not too long can form the basis of your works of art We will give you some simple examples of how this is done now but read Chapter 4 if you want some more detailed information Capturing a sample From th
22. iate natural note or semitone Whenever you press the space bar you either plant a note at the cursor position or you remove one Because the Music Machine is a two voice synthesiser you can only play two notes simultaneously that is by having two notes aligned vertically on the staves If you attempt to enter a third note the one nearest to it will disappear automatically Changing bars Experiment with the bar editor by moving notes around the staves select Play from time to time to see what your composition sounds like When you have completely ruined the first bar select Bar and when prompted key in the number of another bar and press ENTER Don t worry about messing up the song you can always reload it from tape or Mircrodrive to restore it to its former glory Changing the lyrics Select Lyrics and when prompted by the red flashing cursor enter a name for the bar When you come to compile your song the bar number and the first part of the lyric name will be displayed in a screen panel If you use lyrics that remind you of the music in that particular bar you will find it easier to assemble your song this will be illustrated with an example in a moment 4 1 2 The Tune Editor Select tuNe editor from the Main Menu and you will see the screen 21 22 shown in Figure 8 This editor is not nearly as complicated as the Bar Editor All you need do with this screen is construct a lis
23. is dead space by moving the front cursor F with the cursor keys to the start of the rise Play the sound to see what effect this has on the sample Select B and move the back cursor to the end of the fall and you will now have sandwiched the useful part of the signal Play it to ensure that you have eliminated the dead space Some signals if truncated at a high signal level will sound spitty when played This may be overcome by starting and stopping the sample at points where the spectrum is at or near the base line Because rapid variations in the signal level are difficult to spot when the spectrum is displayed normally you can Zoom into the part of the graph nearest the selected cursor that is either front or back and examine it in close up You will then find it very much easier to truncate the signal at a minumum and thus avoid spit You may play your sample backwards by invoking Reverse The positions of the front and back cursors are expressed in terms of elapsed time in units of milliseconds thousandths of a second The free figure is also in milliseconds and gives you a measure of how much space you have left for other samples You have in total about one second at your disposal This might not seem like very long but bear in mind that realistic drum sounds can be made with samples less than one tenth of a second long 4 3 2 The two voice synthesiser Although it is not possible to play
24. lay before you go on to the next exciting instalment Playing the drums From the Main Menu select Drums The screen will look like that shown in Figure 5 If you want to hear the rhythm that we have supplied you must ensure that the drum channel rather than the music channel is selected on the Midi screen To do this Quit to the Main Menu select Midi and then key 4 to redirect the output to the earphone and phone sockets Quit back to the Main Menu and just select Play If you want to tap out your own rhythm select Drums then press the keys on the Spectrum s keyboard that are shown on the screen To stop the rhythm playing press BREAK Want to change the drum sound Well you can either play all the eight sounds that correspond to the keys shown in Figure 5 or you can make a new sound Because this is a bit more complicated we ll describe how to do it in a moment Echo and reverberation The echo effect is created by a delay that s adjustable from one thousandth of a second to around one whole second How much you can delay the sound depends on how many different samples you ve already got stored in your computer If this is the first time you have loaded the software you will have automatically loaded a full set of sounds from the program tape and you will have to make a bit of room for the echo This is done by deleting one or more samples Don t worry they re still on th
25. n Chapter 2 first We don t want you to hurt yourself So you are all plugged in and the software has loaded and looks like Figure 2 Good 3 1 Playing the sounds rhythms and songs supplied The way in which you make selections from the menu screens is to press the key on the Spectrum keyboard associated with the capital letter shown in the panel you want to choose Example If you want to play the piano simply press O Try that now The screen will look like that shown in Figure 3 To get back to the Main Menu straight away simply press Q for Quit Try that now Experiment with the keys until you understand how they work then choose Quit to return to the Main Menu Playing the tune Select Play by pressing P and you will hear the tune whose name is shown in the panel at the bottom of the screen What no sound Perhaps you have forgotten to turn up the volume on your amplifier or maybe you haven t connected the leads properly mnmmnmmhnmhmm inn Rey board Pirin Eca Gas Grom esr eater murrent Sampit amp SYNTH Figure 3 The Piano Keyboard Playing the piano Select pianO and the screen will change to the one you ve already seen in Figure 3 The numbers and letters shown on the screen correspond to the notes that you can play from the Spectrum s keyboard Press some of the musical keys Doesn t sound much like a piano does it That s because you a
26. n the panel at the foot of the screen If you want to change the voice that is played by the piano then simply select Current sample and when prompted by the red flashing cursor enter the number of the voice you want to use and press ENTER Press one of the musical keys to hear the sound Note that the music channel must have been selected from the Midi screen in order to listen to the audio output from The Machine see the next paragraph A directory of the available voices is shown on the Main Menu screen Play Once you have composed a song you can play it from more than one screen You will probably play the song most often from either the Main Menu or the Song Editor screens it doesn t matter which Note that you can only play the displayed bars from the Tune editor You must direct the music or drum output to the Ear channel from the Midi screen if you want to listen to compositions through either the earphone socket or an amplifier connected to the phono output This is simply done by selecting Midi and keying either 4 or 7 according to whether you want to hear drums or music If you want to alter the song that we have supplied read the next paragraph of this manual 4 1 1 The Bar Editor Two synthesised voices may be played in parallel from within a bar or tune In the context of The Music Machine the difference between a bar and a tune is as follows Bar this is
27. nd so on 8187 hex is equal to 33159 decimal 5 2 Music capacity RAM is consumed at the rate of one byte per sample With a sample rate of 19 444 kHz and about 22K of data space approximately 1 1 seconds of continuous digitised data can be stored The amount of free RAM is indicated on most screens and is given in units of milliseconds Up to eight digitised samples can be stored in RAM simultaneously At full capacity the average duration of each sample is about 0 15 seconds In practice the digitised drum sounds consume around one tenth of a second each leaving a third of a second or so for user sounds You do of course have the option of deleting the resident samples in order to make use of the full data space The total duration available of around 1 1 seconds is we believe you will find a surprisingly long time for most musical sounds A song or rhythm can comprise a sequence of up to 255 different bars Because most music repeats a range of bars the final song or drum sequence can last very many minutes 5 3 Additional notes You must use headphones whose lead is terminated with a 3 5 mm stereo jack plug as a mono plug may short the output and you will 37 38 hear nothing Aim to use headphones with an impedance between 8 and 64 Ohms By all means experiment with microphones other than the one we supply in general the better the quality of the microphone the better the results ZX Spectrum and Microdrive
28. ng program 10 CLEAR 26999 20 LOAD m 1 SCREEN SCREEN 30 LOAD m 1 CODE CODE 40 RANDOMIZE USER 2700 Save the program using SAVE m 1 run LINE 10 Note that you cannot format a Microdrive cartridge from within the Music Machine software so you should have a cartridge ready to use However if you have forgotten to format a cartridge before you loaded the program you may do so by selecting basIc from the Main Menu and you will be dropped into the BASIC interpreter from which you can format a cartridge To return to the program type RANDOMIZE USR 27000 and press ENTER 33 34 5 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION OF THE MUSIC MACHINE If you have some technical knowledge and machine code program ming experience you may well be interested in the contents of this chapter On the other hand you might not want to know anything at all about the technicalities of The Music Machine in which case you won t miss much by not reading this 5 1 Technical Spec The Music Machine incorporates two Ferranti devices for digital to analogue DAC and analogue to digital A to D conversion The part numbers are ZN429E8 and ZN449 respectively The circuit also includes a Motorola 6850 ACIA Asynchronous Com munications Interface Adapter for handling the MIDI channel two anti alias filters one for input and one for output a discrete microphone amplifier and a headphone amplifier Th
29. nical Spec 5 2 Capacity in terms of stored sounds tunes songs and rhythms 5 3 Additional notes alt 0 CAN T WAIT TO TRY IT HUH This chapter is for those users who want to use the Music Machine before they read the manual Only start here if you really know what you are doing If you are in any doubt at all read chapters 2 and 3 NOW Do not hurt yourself by using an amplifier stupidly 10 Power off everywhere Connect Music Machine to bus Plug in amplifier or phones Plug in microphone Power mens and amp if you are using one Load software Select function by pressing capital letter associated with menu choice Play the drum rhythm supplied by pressing P Play the song supplied by pressing M then 7 then Q then Et Experiment then read chapter 4 1 INTRODUCTION We believe that The Music Machine is the most powerful and excit ing Spectrum add on ever to reach the market If your friends have already told you about the amazing things it can do then skip this section of the manual and go to Chapter 2 Q What is The Music Machine A It is a peripheral that plugs into the back of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k Plus 128 and Plus 2 computers The machine lets you compose your own sounds tunes songs and drum rhythms even if you don t know much about music at all It also lets you do special effects Q What sort of things can The Music Machine do
30. pace you have available for composing your tunes If you want to interrupt a song whilst it is playing press Quit or BREAK mmnmnmmmnmhm Tene editor mmm mmnmhin Gis Gay 1 Standard n Variant a 1 Standard a 1 Standard a 2 Variant 3 1 Standard ni 1 Standard rn 1 standard rn Current sample amp SYNTH Bey hae Bey Figure 8 The Tune Editor 4 2 The Drum Machine On selecting Drums from the Main Menu you will see the screen shown in Figure 5 Pressing the appropriate keys on the Spectrum s keyboard will result in the sounds listed in the bottom panel of the screen being played The relationship between the keys and the number of the sound is a function of their physical positions Spectrum Key Sound Number 2 1 4 3 E 5 S 7 23 24 Spectrum Key Sound Number 3 2 WwW 4 A 6 D 8 Note that from the Drums screen you can only play one drum sound at a time but you still have eight sounds to choose from However it is possible to play any three sounds from these eight at the same time when using the drum editor to build a rhythm 4 2 1 The Drum Rhythm Editor When you select drUm editor from the Main menu you are con fronted with the screen shown in Figure 9 The column of numbers from 1 to 8 lists the memory resident sound samples If you load the software from the original cassette you will see listed the drum sounds supplied MAMMAM Crum saa tor RUIN
31. re actually playing one of the sample voices which makes the sound called Synth every time you press a key We ll tell you how to make your own musical instrument sounds later on 11 Changing the sound Before we record some new sound effects let s change the sound that the piano plays Select Quit and from the Main Menu select sAmple editor What you are now looking at is the waveform of the sound that plays Synth This is shown in Figure 4 Don t worry about this screen too much because we ll tell you more about it in Chapter 4 Whilst you re here you might as well press Play again just to see that you can hear the sound from more than one screen Select Current sample and you will see that the title in the bottom panel clears and a red flashing cursor appears to prompt you for an input TUL Sample Eda tor FURR Eiaa Enit cem Beverse E 5 Figure 4 The Sample Editor Type 7 and press ENTER The bottom panel will now read 7 Bass Note that this is one of the sample sounds listed in the big panel on the Main Menu screen Press Play again and listen See how easy it is to change instruments Return to the Main Menu by selecting Quit and then go to the pianO screen Press a few of the keyboard keys on your Spectrum and listen to the difference Quit back to the Main Menu and select P
32. sounds like If the level is too low you will not capture a sample because you will not have set off the automatic trigger When a sample is being taken the Trigger panel is high lighted The bar meter must reach approximately 6 dB before the Music Machine is triggered although this can be adjusted using the left right cursor keys On the other hand if when you play the sample it is very distorted then the slider control is set too high The Manual control option on this screen enables you to capture a sample right from the moment that you press Trigger and is useful if you want to record at a particular instant in time The Loop option on this screen enables you to play a particular sample continuously Once Loop is selected anything you play from the piano or MIDI screen will continue to sound until a key is released or note off data is sent 4 3 1 Editing captured sounds When you capture a sound that sample will fill all of the allocated free memory space Assuming that you currently have no samples resident and say you want to capture a sound lasting 1000 milliseconds then most of the free space will be taken This is why the sample editor is provided Capture a sound some speech for example Select Edit and you will see the screen shown in Figure 4 The peaks in the displayed signal represent the captured sound The horizontal sections of the display are most probably dead space Edit out th
33. t of numbers Each number and name represents a bar that you have already composed To make a song you simply string together bars in the order that you want As an example we can compose a variation of the song Snap the Boogie that is supplied with the software just by re ordering the bars and adding the new bar that we ruined sorry composed in section 4 1 1 Drum rhythm bars are assembled in the left hand panel and music bars in the right hand one Move the cursor right to the music tune editor and then scroll through the music using the up and down cursor keys Overtype at the cursor position to replace a few bar numbers and watch how a handful of letters of the lyric are displayed to remind you of what the bars are If you want to insert new bar numbers just press ENTER bar number 1 will then be inserted by default and add the number you want To change the voice select Current sample and enter the new voice number To edit the tune name select Tune and enter the new name If you select Play from the Drum editor screen you can only play the displayed bar and not the whole rhythm sequence composed from lots of bars the whole is playable from the Tune editor Whether music or drums play when you select P depends on which side of the screen the cursor is displayed Move between music and drums using the cursor left and right keys The number in the free panel indicates the amount of s
34. tages of this are that you can load and save individual samples sub libraries of samples individual tunes and sub libraries of tunes to suit your particular needs If you would rather you can save all your samples and tunes together with the program so that when you next load the software it is ready to run The program is smart enough to recognise whether what it is loading is samples or tunes so you need not necessarily specify which You may use the usual Spectrum LOAD command if you cannot remember the name of what you want to load tape only or you can look for specific named files 4 6 1 Cassette and Microdrive storage You can download the whole of the software to Microdrive cartridge in the following manner 31 32 1 Return to BASIC from the Main Menu by selecting basIc 2 Format a spare Microdrive cartridge 3 Save the main program using the following command SAVE m 1 CODE CODE 27000 38536 4 To load the program from a cold start use CLEAR 26999 LOAD m 1 CODE CODE You might wish to move all of the software from cassette to Microdrive so that it loads and autoruns If so do the following 1 Copy the main program to cartridge as explained above 2 Reset your computer and rewind the tape 3 Write and run the following program 10 LOAD SCREEN 20 SAVE m 1 SCREEN SCREEN Play the cassette player 4 Now write and save the followi
35. utomatically but we ll do a quick example automatically now and explain more in Chapter 4 So that you can experiment with several sounds you should delete all those that are currently stored in your computer So select Quit then dElete and then 2 Remember that you can always reload the original sounds from the tape Quit back to the Main Menu and select sampleR again Choose Automatic and repeat This is me into the microphone As soon as the volume of your choice gets loud enough to cause the level meter to go over half way into the yellow bar press Trigger and what you say will be captured automatically What is happening is that the volume of your voice when sufficiently loud will trigger The Machine Until you get used to the level meter you might have to try capturing your voice two or three times before you get it right Don t worry though you ll quickly get the hang of it So that you know which sample is your voice select Name and when you see the red flashing cursor type in My voice and press ENTER Select Play in order to hear what you sound like inside a computer Now that you have a new sample you can Quit back to the main menu and play the Spectrum piano keyboard to produce your new sounds Note that you can alter the position of the Trigger point with respect to the bar meter by moving it left and right with the cursor ke
36. xteen you will then have one complete bar for every sixteen notes Or if the signature is eight you will be able to play eight notes to the bar Entering music The way in which you enter music is illustrated in the following example Because the software with which we supply you already has bars and tunes built into it we shall edit the supplied tune which is called Snap the Boogie Sharps and flats Quit then select the Bar editor You will see the first bar of the song displayed The black rectangles on the staves each represent a note The notes may be natural white notes on a piano or sharps and flats the black notes If a note is sharp then a is displayed at the top or bottom of the stave nearest to that note Notes entered as sharps are denoted by a sign whereas flats are shown either as naturals or sharps An example of this is B flat which is actually displayed as A sharp see below Try this Make the second note on the lower stave sharp by firstly keying s to alter the box showing natural moving the cursor to the note and pressing the space bar Change the third note to a flat by repeating the above process except for pressing f for flat instead of s for sharp You will notice that if you call for a sharp or a flat note that doesn t actually exist in musical terms for example there is no such thing as C flat the Music Machine software will select the appropr
37. ys This lets you control the level at which the automatic trigger occurs What other handy short sounds can you capture conveniently How about a snippet from the radio or a raspberry OK that s the easy stuff done with Now we are really going to show you how to make the best use of The Music Machine The next chap ter explains how to capture and edit your own sounds and then build them into your own songs tunes and rhythms We will show you everything that The Machine and the software can do but because it is so powerful we might use words or phrases that are new to you Wherever possible we will describe what we mean so that you ll understand Even if you ve never composed any music or rhythms before we ll be very surprised if you still haven t after reading the next chapter and experimenting with The Music Machine 17 4 DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS OF WHAT DOES WHAT In this chapter we have assumed that you have already read chapters 2 and 3 and that you are familiar with the simpler things that The Music Machine and its software can do If you haven t read these parts of the manual we recommend that you do so now Thank you 4 1 Playing using the Spectrum keyboard pianO On selecting pianO from the Main Menu the system behaves as a simple monophonic single voic synthesiser Pressing any of the appropriate keys from the keyboard screen will play the currently selected sample indicated i
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