MINSTREL

by Daniel Cannon



[The article doesn't give the USR address to run the CODE (it's not]

[the load address), but 64849 seems to work OK.                JimG]



I seem to get hundreds of letters every week from frantic 48K owners

clamouring to know how to make their Speccies play tunes in the

background while they get on with running their programs. So you can

probably imagine my relief when this one turned up. With a minimal

amount of fingertip fatigue you too will now be able to add musical

accompaniment to even the most stubborn of games.



Getting the show on the road is simplicity itself. Actually, it's a

little tricky, but not off- puttingly so. As always, knock in the

Basic first and save it. Follow this with the hex, which should be

entered via the Hex Loader at address 64834. Then reload the Basic and

run it. You'll be asked to enter a number. This is the length of each

chunk of a note (lots of chunks are played very quickly, one after the

other, to give a fair impression of a continuous note). Values of

between .002 and .009 give a reasonable result without slowing down

the computer too much.



You'll then be asked to load the Machine Code back in. Finally, a

stand-alone block of code will be generated and saved on to tape ready

to be loaded back in at a later date.



Before you can get the thing to actually play a tune you'll need to

tell it the notes to play. These are represented by the following

values:

	-28: Stop tune

	-27: Restart tune

	-26: Pause for current note length

	-25,x: Change note length to x 50th of a second

	-24...+24: Normal beep value of pitch



To POKE them into memory, might I suggest a program along the lines of

the following?



This plays the scale of C major with notes of 0.2 seconds length, over

and over again. The first person to send in the whole of Beethoven's

9th Symphony (with choral parts included) wins a YS badge. They don't

call me Jonty The Generous for nothing.