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Germany

Hello, i have a question. After some works with my hardware gear and my gameboys i wanna try out beepola on my pc. I downloaded the manual and i understand how i have to type in notes. But how can i change them with effects or something else and my biggest problem ... how do i add drums???

Big thanks forward
fReD

PS: And, is it needed to send the song from beepola in a real sincalir zx spectrum? Is the sound much more original as from the software?

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Beepola supports a few different sound engines, there's a box on the UI or menu that lets you select which one.  Some of them have drums and some don't.  Usually the drum channel is controlled by the column on the right side of the tracker, sometimes it only has one digit.  I can't remember exactly which engines use it but if you put numbers in that column you'll get a different drum sound, either a proper effect (like in the Savage driver) or a pitched noise.

As with the drums the FX vary between drivers too.  In the docs it tells you which FX are possible.

Last edited by 4mat (Sep 7, 2016 1:49 pm)

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France

Don't forget there are many cool Beeper engine, you can get a list: http://randomflux.info/1bit/viewtopic.php?id=25
Beepola is easy to use. As said above, just try different engines, they are very different to each other. Qchan and Tritone are among the most popular because they have drums and sounds rather well.

The output from Beepola is quite close to the sound you can get from a real Spectrum. Of course it'll be a bit different and probably a bit warmer on the Spectrum.

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Germany

Oh thanks so much. That helps. So i will test that in the next days. One last question. How can i move to the next pattern? And where can i control how often one pattern plays before another plays?
Big thanks forward
Regards fReD from duality micro

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The horizontal number stripe below the song name is your position table.  Click in the empty (...) boxes to type in a pattern number, then that pattern appears in the pattern editor.  You can move the little flag to set where the song will restart when it loops.

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France

The orderlist is quite simple. If you need to play pattern 5 two times before pattern 7, just enter "5 5 7"

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Germany

Aha, thank you mates, cant wait to try it out ... smile

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Germany

Good morning, ahh i get more and more into it. NICE. Where can i get an Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Some broken ones on ebay are cheap but in good conditions ... puh. Very expensive. and how can i transfar the tracks into it?
and one little questions. I fount out to use apattern programming/ changes and drums. But how can i use soem type of effects?
Big thanks forward wink

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Germany

... by the way. It would be interessting if you could change the engines from pattern to pattern ... yeah

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Germany

And the last question for today. How can i set that the notes are not playing unlimited?
Thank you

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France

To transfert to a zx spectrum it's pretty easy, just export the song ("compile song") to a .tap file format with basic loader. Then there are some applications which can convert from .tap to .wav (tapir ? On Unix I'm using tape2wav which is provided by the fuse emulator). Then plug using a monophonic jack from a computer or a smartphone into the "ear" socket on the Spectrum. Type "j" it will display 'load', then "symb shift" (ctrl with an emulator) + p, it will display ", do it a second time so it will display

load ""

Then play your wav file (at a quite loud volume), so it will start loading data. After 2-3 minutes (depending on the data to be transfered) you will be able to record from the "mic" socket.

It's true ZX spectrum can be quite pricey now sad
I've got mine for around 50 €, and it has a color display default (but I don't care) so the price was a bit reduced in comparison to others.

This one looks quite ok:
http://www.ebay.fr/itm/ZX-Spectrum-Vint … SwaB5Xnbun

maybe zx + are a bit less reliable, but it's according to wikipedia so I don't know:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectr … pectrum.2B
On original ZX spectrum, the rubber keyboard is not very reliable

this one is not in fresh condition but is described as working: http://www.ebay.fr/itm/Sinclair-Spectru … SwmmxW3z37

if you can get a zx 128 or 2+, you'll get also an AY-3-8910 chip, which is cool to compose music for (with Vortex Tracker II for example).But you can also plug a quite cheap extension on a 48 for this purpose: http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=40

You can't change engines during play.

For stopping a note during the play, type "A" (or "Q" I don't know, I'm using azerty keyboard not qwerty), it should display a R-- which cut the note.

for the last question which I don't understand well, about effects, some engines allows to tweak a bit the sound, but several other don't. For example with qchan you can only change sustain (in a pattern). It's 1-bit sounds, so it's different from what you can get from a dedicated soundchip, but it doesn't prevent to be creative, I hope: https://garvalf.bandcamp.com/album/one-myth

Last edited by garvalf (Sep 8, 2016 7:54 am)

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Germany

Hello, oh thank you for the much infos. I hope i get an ZX Spectrum + in the future. When i export a track in beepola i can do this as a wav file. What i didnt understand at the moment is for what are Skw and Detune ( i believe i know for what its is) but how can i change the values, the sttings. And in the drum section i can choose different sounds between 1-9 ... are there more?

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Germany

Thanks about the info that there is no much effects or bending. Is there a way to step by step preview or only the ones with the control arrows

Last edited by dualitymicro (Sep 8, 2016 8:08 am)

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Nomad's Land

Skew is roughly equivalent to the duty cycle setting in LSDj/Famitracker/etc. It's a hexadecimal input field, it takes values from 00 - FF. The higher the value, the "thinner" the sound. 00 means standard 50:50 duty cycle.

There are only those 9 drum sounds. But with a bit of experimentation with the effect settings, it is possible to create drums on the tone channels. For example: http://events.retroscene.org/dh2016/ZX_Beeper_Music/853

Btw Beepola online help is here: http://freestuff.grok.co.uk/beepola/help/

Last edited by irrlichtproject (Sep 8, 2016 8:58 am)

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Germany

Ah oh great. Thank you. That helps allot

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France

The wav file exported from beepola is music, not data, so it won't work this way for transferring to a real spectrum, it's just for sharing the emulated music.

It seems skw is for changing the duty cycle: http://freestuff.grok.co.uk/beepola/hel … e-tri.html
For the drum it's only click drums so the 9 sounds are quite similar. Just use this to make a variation of the levels for making some rythms.

Here is a tune I made with Beepola and the tritone engine: http://chipmusic.org/garvalf/music/bourrasques