ZX Spectrum music creation

Does anyone know of a good way to make ZX Spectrum sounding music with something like FL Studio? A dedicated Spectrum tracker would be even better but I cannot find one :( Nor can I find a good description of the Spectrums abilities. Can anyone help me out?

What was the Spectrum (128k) capable of? I recall hearing some cool tunes towards the end of its life.

Jason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_AY-3-8910

They're useful for rendering small vermin unconscious, for wedging open heavy doors, and a mate of mine once removed its 'giblets' and turned it into a pencil case.

You could make Spectrum sounding music with a spectrum sound emulator... Just write your music in the correct format and play it in the emulator.

RetroMusic?
http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=79151

Sometimes when I visit my local Barnes & Noble store, I see in the back of Retro Gamer, a magazine sold at the store, classifieds advertising the sale of '80s computers such as the Spectrum, the Atari 800, Commodore 64, etc.

Sometimes, I do miss my Commodore 64, and ZX81. At the prices that they're selling them for, I would buy one for old times sake.

Because I was young, I had to get rid of the old ones I had bought before.

Does anyone here have thoughts about buying one of the older 8-bit machines for fond memories?

I still have my C64 in the garage. It sits below 2 Amiga's; 500 & 1200. Can't imagine them working though.

As for the Spectum,...

Firmware: 3.54 MHz Zilog Z80A CPU

16K / 48K RAM (later 128K RAM)
Display: 32 x 22 character text display
256 x 192 pixel resolution
8 colours
Sound: 1 channel, 5 octave (16/48K Spectrums)
3 channel, 7 octaves (128K Spectrums)
I/O: Z80 bus, tape, RF television (All Spectrums)
External numeric keypad (Spectrum 128)
RS232 - Midi Out, RGB, Joystick (Spectrum 128, +2, +2A, +3)
Storage: Built-in tape recorder (Spectrum +2, +2A)
Build-in 3" disk drive (Spectrum +3)

The Timex/Sinclair is a Spectrum, isn't it? (The Timex was sold in the USA)
I remember seeing them for sale for like $49 (with extra memory modules for only $15/each!)
I would have bought one if I didn't already have a C-64 at the time with...
Simon's BASIC! That was a cool BASIC (about a million times more useful than CBM BASIC)

Anyway, I still fire up my old Amiga 1200 every once in a while, and play CCS-64 on the PC. Ah, those were the good ol days.

Russell

To create spectrum music, try "Vortex Tracker"; It works on PC and generate .pt3 files, I use it to make some musics for MSX :)

The tracker can play the music on PC (emulating several sound-chips), so you can have ZX Spectrum - or MSX, CPC, C64...

I dont have the URL here with me, but if you google for Vortex Tracker, PT3, etc, it should appear pretty fast :)

This is interesting : http://zxtunes.com/software.php?id=25

Good ole Google.

Thanks for the help everyone looks like Vortex Tracker is the best option for the PC. I will have a go with the true Speccy ones too but I guess they are totally keyboard driven?

What are Speccy emulators like nowadays? I`m guessing that they are pretty accurate. Are there 128k versions?

Jason.

Speecy was pretty horrid for sound, even compared to a BBCmicro-B 32k
heh remember this caccophony:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxXh4qxWB_0

I haven't seen many 128k emulators, probably something to do with how the 128k worked. It actually paged the memory, so you could only access 32k (I think) at a time, switching between pages to access the remainder.

All in all, the emulators are fine, aside fr some jopystick compatibility, though, the old "Sinclair" Joystick used to represent keypresses anyway.

aye player one was 67890 and two 12345
i think 69 were left/right and 78 up/down 0 fire

the +2/3 and im guessing the 128 too as it was afaik the same sans built in tape/disk drive used that ay chip, but without checking i think the z80 did that on the 48k
i dont recall any really great themes (that wernt done better on another system) mind you i was never a chip music fan in them days

i think pc's missed out on this, aside from pc beep soundblaster vered towards samples very early on iir dont know what adlib was like

ugh, thanks for highlighting my awful 'type-too-fast' spelling :/

Thread resurrection just for that?

Spectrum trackers ...

http://zxtrackers.republika.pl/