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MISTER BEEP's Profile

ChipMusic.org » MISTER BEEP's Profile

NEWS: My BEEPER albums published by German independent label BERLIN HQ are downloadable
here: http://berlin_hq.micromusic.net/bhack.html

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Hello. I'm Mister Beep.

I make micromusic/chiptunes but it's not typical micromusic. As opposed to 16-bit chiptunes (PC), 8-bit chiptunes (Amiga) and 4-bit chiptunes (Atari XL, ZX Spectrum 128K, C64), I make ONE BIT music using TIMEX 2048 (a clone of ZX Spectrum 48Kb) and its BEEPER. The BEEPER sound is generated by Z80 chip wich is - with help of ULA chip - sound-source of SPECTRUM/TIMEX hardware.

The machine has only 1 channel of of square-wave 1-bit sound. But Z80 is also SPECTRUM/TIMEX' Central Processing Unit so due to its 3,5Mhz activity (software mixing) Spectrum 48Kb has finally:
- from 2 to 8 channels,
- various modulations and envelopes,
- drums & noises,
- digital sound,
- speech synthesis,
- volume (it's impossible to make various volumes in 1-bit sound actually so even this is impressive) etc... Still only 1 bit of course. I could say that everything mentioned above is theroretically impossible to make on this computer. But... it still works!

I started to make 1-bit music in 80s but - shame on me - some time later I though nobody listened to 1bit sound anymore because AY chip appeared on ZX Spectrum. I got silent for many years but since 2006 - I'M BACK!