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The 1-Bit Forum → General Discussion → Welcome to the 1-Bit Forum (aka The Introduction Thread)
Welcome aboard the 1-Bit Forum, great to have you here! Please make yourself at home, and if you like, please introduce yourself in this thread 
So, for a start... I'm utz 
I make 1-bit music (surprise surprise) and I've also coded a few sound routines. Also I run Ancient Wonderworld, a blog about oldschool computer art - see the links in my signature.
Glad to learn that 1-bit MUSIC forums haven't vanished.
@utz: sorry for my belated reply, nowadays I rarely log on my Yahoo account! 
@garvalf: I need to finish our program, I'm in debt with you. 
Hello TK90X Fan!
I'm glad to see you here.
Don't think you are in debt, no! I'd be glad if it could be finished, but so far I've released the individual files in a package so it's already good enough, so do as you wish
Greetings!
Cool forum.
300:2C 60 D0 30 N300G
Hello there!
I'm 0r4. I make mostly of my music in 8bit, but I want to explore more to improve.
See you in forum
Cheers 0r4, welcome aboard! Of course we talk about 1-bit here most of the time, but we like 8-bit, too
as long as it's not 16-bit, it's ok for us
Hi everyone!
I already said hello in calc section but since 16-bit was mentioned above and this is 'introduction thread' I couldnt resist not to introduce you to some of my filthy 16-bit sounds
https://zuol.bandcamp.com ;everything
https://ulanmajorat.bandcamp.com ;everything except vocals and a few solos
https://betanjehu.bandcamp.com/album/tadeusz-cie-lak-trio ;bass heregreat forum you got here, lots of informative threads for a beginner in 1bit like me ;]
cheers!
Wow, you seem to be really active! Also, I think black metal will have a few fans around here
The black metal band is rather cool. My favourite Polish black metal album is "Wicher" by Sacrilegium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrmnbldZiUQ . Other albums from Poland I enjoy in this vein: "Grom" and "Sventevith" by Behemoth, "Prawo stali" by Graveland, Arkona
Graveland is a bit controversial due to this NSBM shit, i really dont like their music either but sacrilegium is pretty nice ;]
one of my favorites from polish bm scene is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzuDC-RlYX8. Internationally looking definitively Vinterland ;]
Howdy. My name is Mark and I live in rural Dumfries and Galloway in the South West of Scotland and I make films, music and stuff.
New around these parts and new to making music on the Speccy. Took the long way round to find you guys but glad to be here. Looking forward to reading through the stickies. I imagine I'll find a bunch of answers to my initial burning 1 Bit questions without having to annoy anyone first.
Fun fact, I grew up in Dundee in Scotland and both my parents (and my grandmother) worked at the Timex in the 80's, assembling Spectrums.
Hey Mark, welcome aboard! I realize we don't actually have a sticky about getting started on Speccy 1-bit music 
And we're always happy to help, so please feel free to ask any beginner's questions you may have.
Thanks utz, that's very much appreciated. You may regret saying that though, ha, ha!
My hope is to use native programs and learn some assembly - particularly interested in the assembly side. I have picked up some 2nd hand machine code books but I've found little reference to sound and so am reading the "1 Bit Routine" tutorial with great interest (if little understanding at the moment!).
I spend toooooo much time as it is, editing/making music on a Mac, so I would ideally like to do as much as I can natively with the Speccy, rather than cross platform.
I am very interested in sound design and computer music in general and had been trying to get answers elsewhere about synthesis on the Speccy but with little luck. Finally found some irrlicht tracks, that led me to your videos on youtube and finally here.
I have my old ZX and an AY 8912 sound card (which literally arrived this morning).
Figured the beeper sound being output through the mini jack would make things a little easier.
Well, I'd be more than happy to aid you in your quest to pick up assembly. We definately need more people writing their own sound routines.
Btw check out these:
Mastering Machine Code on Your ZX81, by Toni Baker - There's also a ZX Spectrum version of this book, but this one comes as a hyperlinked html version. Very handy, especially chapter 8.
How To Write ZX Spectrum Games, by Jonathan Cauldwell - Very useful once you've learned some basic assembly theory and are wondering how to put it into practise.
You'll also want a mnemonics table for a quick overview over all the available commands. I mostly use this one. It's missing a few undocumented opcodes, though. The definitive list of all Z80 opcodes is here.
Edit: Oh, and thanks for your contribution on bandcamp btw Glad to hear there's at least one person who actually likes my beeper poetry 
Cheers! Another thing you'll want to do is setting up a toolchain. Books usually don't explain how to do this in a modern way. There are many different ways of going about this, ultimately it all depends on your personal preferences. Are you a bit familiar with using the shell on your Mac and compiling simple C/C++ programs?
Ah ok. Nope, no C++ programming experience. I'm a total novice all round as far as programming goes!
To be honest, I'm keen to keep things native and would like to stay away from the Mac entirely if at all possible - I use the laptop for everything else in my work so I'm keen to switch it off in the evenings and use the Speccy.
I realise this is tying a hand behind my back to a certain extent but I'm a little powerbook fatigued + there is an element in my work where I like to employ old tech. My last project generated all of the visuals with a 1950's Heathkit Oscillosope and a hacked Vectrex + modular synth. Example here: https://vimeo.com/141600974 Hours of footage was then cut to the music.
I have my 48k at the moment with a Zaxon DivSD interface arriving this week + a ZX Spectrum Next board which delivers in August. I'm hopeful the Next will be a good computer to program on, taking advantage of it's expanded specs but still utilising the z80, although in FPGA.
Reading through the mnemonic dictionary you linked me too has helped already. I was able to at least recognise correlations between your code and the instructions, so that's a start!
I had a question re: the beeper. Am I right in thinking that in the 48k the sound generation occurs solely between the z80 and the speaker and if that's the case is the recognisable beeper sound is a characteristic of the 40 ohm speaker? Does the signal then flow from speaker to the ear/mic output? I may cringe at this question in a few weeks.....
Well, that certainly means taking the hard route On the other hand, I can completely understand your desire to stay away from "big" computers. In this case you may want to familiarize yourself with MRS (the Memory Resident System). It's one of the most advanced assemblers that run natively on the 48K, and it should work just fine in conjunction with the divSD.
Regarding the 48K sound, it actually is generated by the ULA chip, which also does the graphics. The ULA sends the signal to both the on-board speaker and the MIC output (and since the latter isn't fully seperated from the EAR port it's audible there as well, at a lower volume). Pretty much all the recordings available online are taken from the MIC port.
Like what I've seen so far of your works on vimeo, nice and dark. Will have to check out more of that
Ah, that makes sense and explains the problem of running graphics and audio at the same time. Were the Z80's themselves used in other systems for sound generation or is it strictly as sound CPU? I did see reference to a Z80 of a sound driver here: http://md.squee.co/Zilog_Z80
I understand recreating the ULA was the trickiest part for creating ZX clones. Okay doke, will download MRS now and read up on the ULA chip! Now you mention it I've seen a few references to Chris Smith's Spectrum ULA book, might have a read of that to familiarise myself with it properly.
Glad you like the music, it's got steadily more abstract and less musical as time has went on!
Z80 is sometimes used in the Sega Genesis/Megadrive as a sound co-processor. It's also used for sound generation in a number of other home computers without dedicated sound hardware.
You don't really need an in-depth understanding of the ULA. I suppose my wording was a bit confusing: As far as sound goes, the ULA only converts the digital output from the Z80 into an analogue signal. The actual sound synthesis is done by the Z80.
Basically, you mostly interact with the ULA either by writing to VRAM (0x4000 - 0x5bff) in order to change graphics, or by writing to port 0xfe in order to change the border color, and the state of the 1-bit signal. Bit 4 is the relevant bit for controlling the beeper state.
The tricky part of running graphics and audio at the same time is this: the Z80 shares the data bus with the ULA in the lower 16 KB of the Spectrum's RAM (0x4000 - 0x7fff), and the ULA gets precedence over the CPU. So when the CPU is executing a read or write operation that concerns the first 16K of RAM, it may have to wait a variable amount of cycles. This is called "memory contention". Now here's the catch: When synthesizing 1-bit music, you usually need to use cycle-exact timing. However, the amount of delay caused by the memory contention is very difficult to predict, so cycle-exact code becomes nearly impossible when generating graphics at the same time. There are some tricks to make it appear as if graphics and music are running at the same time, but actual synchronous gfx+msx generation is considered very challenging (though not impossible).
You would need to spend most of the CPU time on both machines to run the MIDI protocol, as Spectrum does not have hardware serial I/O.
Ah, thanks Shiru. Good to know. I thought it could perhaps be a possibility as the 128 has a MIDI port (albeit a very weird one!) This is all part of the appeal of learning to program on the Spectrum and gaining a sense of its inner workings because at the moment I have a working knowledge of the DAW's, editing software etc that I use but little or no understanding of how any of it works under the hood!
Hi there.
Leicester, UK based person here.
Had a Speccy in the 80s, did a little z80, have tinkered with it since - and have been sharpening my skills. Though they still aren't very sharp. Have written a few things - and have various things in 'nearly finished' states.
Work in music tech education, and have a good working knowledge of music. Played with Beepola, and in fact used it for making parts of some music I've licensed to a library music company. And used it for generating some of the music I made in a Musical I wrote, performed at Edinburgh Fringe Festival (it was about old computers).
Currently engaged in a project trying to use a spectrum as far as possible as a music performance tool (I know, a daft idea).
I've been playing around with various different 1bit engines, and seeing how I can add some degree of keyboard control to pattern choice, or various things like that.
I also make Teletext art.
So that's me.
The 1-Bit Forum → General Discussion → Welcome to the 1-Bit Forum (aka The Introduction Thread)
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