[{"TitleName":"Wham! The Music Box","Publisher":"Melbourne House","Author":"Mark Alexander","YearOfRelease":"1985","ZxDbId":"0008965","Reviews":[{"Issue":{"Name":"Your Sinclair Issue 3, Mar 1986","Price":"£0.95","ReleaseDate":"1986-02-13","Editor":"Kevin Cox","TotalPages":98,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Kevin Cox\r\nArt Editor: Martin Dixon\r\nDeputy Editor: Teresa Maughan\r\nProduction Editor: Sara Biggs\r\nDesigner: Caroline Clayton\r\nTechnical Consultant: Peter Shaw\r\nEditorial Consultant: Andrew Pennell\r\nSoftware Consultant: Gavin Monk\r\nContributors: Stephen Adams, Dougie Bern, Luke C, Steve Colwill, Steve Cooke, Iolo Davidson, Tim Hartnell, Ian Hoare, Alison Hjul, Gwyn Hughes, Steve Malone, Max Phillips, Rick Robson, Rachael Smith, Phil South, Chris Wood\r\nAdvertisement Manager: David Baskerville\r\nAdvertisement Executive: Neil Dyson\r\nProduction Manager: Sonia Hunt\r\nGroup Advertisement Manager: Chris Talbot\r\nManaging Editor: Roger Munford\r\nArt Director: Jimmy Egerton\r\nPublisher: Stephen England\r\n\r\nPublished by Sportscene Specialist Press Ltd, [redacted] Company registered in England.\r\nTypesetters: Carlinpoint [redacted]\r\nReproduction: Graphic Ideas, London\r\nPrinters: Chase Web Offset [redacted]\r\nDistribution: Seymour Press [redacted]\r\n\r\nAll material in Your Sinclair ©1986 Felden Productions, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written consent of the publishers. Your Sinclair is a monthly publication."},"MainText":"WHAMBO!\n\nBy George, an 'Andy marketing release, you're thinking to link rock wonders Wham! with the Music Box software. Iolo Davidson goes Wham! Bam! Thank you Melbourne Hourse and makes a few notes of his own.\n\nFAX BOX\nTitle: Wham! The Music Box\nPublisher: Melbourne House\nPrice: £9.95\nReviewer: Iolo Davidson\n\nThis program comes with five of the faberoony Wham! mega-smashes stored in the Music Box's tune memory. Don't ask me what their squillions of fans would make of a Speccy cover version of Young Guns, though!\n\nIf you ever tire of the Dynamic Duo's ditties you can erase them and compose your own, or key in tunes from sheet music. This is what the program's really about so serious musicians or Duranees need not be put off by the Wham! label.\n\nBesides the music editor, with its easy method of on-screen composition, this program gives your Spectrum an extra sound channel. That means you can play two different notes simultaneously, for two part harmony or simple chords. You'll want some method of amplification I get the most from this program, as no software can cure the innately feeble Speccy beeper.\n\nOnce you've composed your hit for pinched someone else's) you can save it to tape or microdrive, complete with the machine code routine that plays it, as a block of code for inclusion in you own programs. No mention is made of the copyright situation on the inlay, though, so I've no idea what'd happen if you wanted to use this music in a program for commercial resale.\n\nTerry Bulfib's had a quick hack and informs us that there is 4K of Basic inside, and more importantly, that the loading and saving of tunes is done in Basic. This means that the microdrive Save and Load options will also work on other drives that use microdrive syntax, like the Opus disk or Wafadrives.\n\nWhat makes it all a doddle to use, and cancels all my previous quibbles us the easy editing. You can play in notes by ear, seeing each key you've pressed marked on both the screen's piano keyboard and the stave. You'll hear it as well and by backspacing you can remove mistakes. You can go through the score note by note, or fast forward through it. Otherwise, just play the tune, all the time with a continual display on the piano keyboard and staves. Plus you can listen to the sound of the notes.\n\nBesides the organ like twin voices, you get a 'bass drum' and three somewhat programmable sound effects based on white noise. You can also alter the playing speed. What you can't do is obtain a printout of the musical score - but since the notation is weird, you won't want to.\n\nFirst they gave programmers the pop star treatment, now the customers get to be pop stars. I hope all this music doesn't lead you to throw your TV out the hotel window.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"75","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Iolo Davidson","Score":"","ScoreSuffix":""}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[{"Text":"Wham! Make it Musical!\r\n\r\nIf you want longer notes than a quaver then use more quavers. Two quavers give you a crochet, four makes a minim, and so on. Try to forget about semi-quavers.\r\n\r\nYou'll find some knowledge of music notation may be helpful when keying in a tune on the editor. I say 'may' because the Music Box uses an abbreviated system of notation that'll annoy real composers.\r\n\r\nThere are always eight quavers to the bar. You can write in other time signatures - but the bar lines will be in the wrong place.\r\n\r\nDuring replay, the effect on the longer notes is a sort of Little Richard keyboard hammering - or what we flautists call vibrato!\r\n\r\nThe music scrolls smoothly to the left during editing or playback. Back spacing causes an empty screen to scroll in from the left.\r\n\r\nYou have to key in the two channels separately, which means switching between channels.\r\n\r\nThere are four octaves, which is more than can be accommodated on the keyboard, so you have to switch from one to another, losing your way on the keyboard in the process.\r\n\r\nTo enter notes into the score, you simply play them in, using the bottom row of keys on the Spectrum as a piano.\r\n\r\nNotes for the two channels are shown in different colours. They're reminiscent of the Mad Piano in Manic Miner - but at least this keyboard's tuned.\r\n\r\nSharps are indicated, but flats are notated as sharps of the note below. Sharps or flats are played on the second keyboard row. You can only write in C major.\r\n\r\nRest are shown as an 'R'. However there's no indication of sound effects or even that the tune has ended."},{"Text":"Wham! makes Waves!\r\n\r\nEveryone knows that the Spectrum has only a single, rather pathetic, sound channel, so how is it possible to play two channel music? Consider, for comparison, a piano. Pressing two keys causes two notes to sound, and unless you're tone deaf, you hear them as two separate tones.\r\n\r\nYour eardrum is vibrated by a waveform made up of a combination of the two original notes. The peaks and troughs of all three individual vibrations mix together in the air, cancelling out out or augmenting each other, until a complex series of high and low pressure waves is formed. You only hear this waveform as two separate notes because the human brain is equipped to unravel complex waveforms into their component parts.\r\n\r\nWhat the Music Box software does is to compare the waveforms of the two separate notes in software, before sending them through the single output channel. By vibrating the Beeper in a complex waveform, the program imitates what would happen to separate notes mixing in the air. The effect upon the ear is similar to that of playing the two notes."}],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Crash Issue 32, Sep 1986","Price":"£1","ReleaseDate":"1986-08-28","Editor":"Graeme Kidd","TotalPages":108,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Publishers: Roger Kean, Oliver Frey, Franco Frey\r\nEditor: Graeme Kidd\r\nStaff Writers: Tony Flanagan, Lloyd Mangram, Hannah Smith\r\nAdventure Editor: Derek Brewster\r\nStrategy Editor: Sean Masterson\r\nTech Tipster: Simon Goodwin\r\nContributing Writers: Jon Bates, Brendon Kavanagh, Rosetta McLeod, John Minson\r\nProduction Controller: David Western\r\nArt Director: Dick Shiner\r\nIllustrators: Ian Craig, Oliver Frey\r\nProduction: Gordon Druce, Tony Lorton, Cameron Pound, Jonathan Rignall, Matthew Uffindell\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Roger Bennett\r\nAdvertisement Assistant: Nick Wild\r\nSubscriptions: Denise Roberts\r\nMail Order: Carol Kinsey\r\n\r\nEditorial and Production: [redacted]\r\n\r\nMail Order and Subscriptions: [redacted]\r\n\r\nADVERTISING\r\nBookings [redacted]\r\n\r\nPrinted in England by Carlisle Web Offset, [redacted] - member of the BPCC Group.\r\n\r\nDistributed by COMAG, [redacted]\r\n\r\nNo material may be reproduced whole or in part without written consent of the copyright holders. We cannot undertake to return any written material sent to CRASH Magazine unless accompanied by a suitably stamped addressed envelope. Unsolicited written or photo material which may be used in the magazine is paid for at our current rates.\r\n\r\n©1986 Newsfield Limited\r\n\r\nCover by Oliver Frey"},"MainText":"Producer: Melbourne House\r\nRetail Price: £9.95\r\nAuthor: Mark Alexander\r\n\r\nAfter the success of Wham, The Music Box, Mark Alexander has vastly improved the sound capabilities, taking full advantage of the sound chip on board the 128. The original version for the 48K machine uses the Beep command split by a routine to create a duophonic effect and has some options for adding percussive noise. Note entry is achieved via the bottom two rows of keys which, in combination with an octave key, gives you a range of about five octaves per voice.\r\n\r\nNote values are limited to quavers only, but you can join them together to form longer notes - rests are inserted from the ENTER key. As you enter notes on the second channel you automatically hear the first track along with it, which means that bum notes in a harmony are instantly recognised. Tempo is variable and editing is absurdly simply - just advance through the tune step by step till you hear the offending note, select the channel and overwrite. There is also a looping facility for each channel so that sequences can be set up or repeats of the whole piece can be arranged.\r\n\r\nSo how does the 128 version improve on this? Plenty, is the answer. The opening turn for the screen display is 'Peter Gunn' in a cleverly designed arrangement that shows off the three channels of sound plus percussion. Each channel can be set to produce a different sound by some rather clever software that allows you to design your own sound envelope. Note entry and editing is very much the same as in the 48K version and the display shows you where you are in the piece as the notes scroll past a fixed point.\r\n\r\nEach channel has a window display showing you which sound envelope number it is using complete with a graph of that envelope. It also registers the note number counted from the beginning of the piece. A larger window flashes up the special effects or commands you have specified as they occur during the piece. The effects, assignable to each channel individually, are as follows:\r\n\r\na) altering the envelope volume which will help you to get joined notes sound smoother, getting rid of the rather annoying pulse present in the 48K version.\r\n\r\nb) altering the individual levels of the channels so that a good sound balance is possible.\r\n\r\nc) an additional looping facility.\r\n\r\nd) the ability to make any channel slide up and down in pitch. This can produce very spectacular effects.\r\n\r\nThe display has a volume meter like a VU meter on a hi-fi. A piano keyboard running across the bottom of the screen shows you where your notes are being played or entered, with a different colour used on the display for each channel. The colour of the screen border can be altered to suit.\r\n\r\nFrom the main menu, apart from the usual load and save options, there are help pages and sections dedicated to defining the sound envelopes. The latter are noise free and produce some pretty good sounds. The envelope editing cleverly uses a set of bar graphs that shape the sound via the arrow keys, each alteration being plotted in an adjoining window. It comes with eight preset sound envelopes so that you are not completely at sea. When transferred to the main display each sound graph is reproduced in miniature in the channel window.\r\n\r\nThere are also nine preset drum noises that can be varied far more than on the 48K version: a wider choice of frequencies and volumes is available via the envelope editing procedure. Any percussion effect has to be put onto one of the three channels but you can switch from percussion to notes within each channel, and with careful planning the loss of one channel for an instant is not noticeable.\r\n\r\nYour homespun masterpieces can be saved to RAM disc as well as cassette. Like the 48K version it has a compiler which produces a machine code routine which lets you put tunes into programs of your own creation.\r\n\r\nThe accompanying documentation and instructions are all fairly accurate, although the key reference guide needs amending for the 128. For example the 'step back one note' command only worked when SYMBOL SHIFT was held down. CAPS LOCK and P independently allows you to step through the tune event by event (note by note as they occur). But it does list a 'get you started' tune for you to enter, as well as six pre-programmed tunes that put The Music Box through it's paces very successfully, even it some of the tunes are a wee bit inaccurate.\r\n\r\nIf improvements are to be made, I would like to see some sort of advanced editing whereby defined sections of the tune could be filed away and re-ordered into a song format. Self-created envelopes could also be stored in this way to allow access to the sound parameters more quickly: an envelope file as it were.\r\n\r\nIf you were only going to buy one music program, then buy The Music Box for the 128. It's a definite winner, and will take a lot of beating.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"57","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Jon Bates","Score":"","ScoreSuffix":""}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Sinclair User Issue 46, Jan 1986","Price":"£0.95","ReleaseDate":"1985-12-18","Editor":"Bill Scolding","TotalPages":148,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"EDITORIAL\r\nEditor: Bill Scolding\r\nDeputy Editor: John Gilbert\r\nStaff Writers: Chris Bourne, Clare Edgeley\r\nDesigner: Gareth Jones\r\nEditorial Secretary: Norisah Fenn\r\nPublisher: Neil Wood\r\n\r\nADVERTISING\r\nAdvertising Manager: Louise Fanthorpe\r\nDeputy Advertisement Manager: Shahid Nizam\r\nAdvertisement Sales Executive: Kathy McLennan\r\nProduction Assistant: Jim McClure\r\nAdvertisement Secretary: Linda Everest\r\n\r\nMAGAZINE SERVICES\r\nSubscriptions Manager: Carl Dunne\r\n\r\nTELEPHONE\r\nAll departments [redacted]\r\n\r\nSinclair User is published monthly by EMAP Business & Computer Publications\r\n\r\nCover Illustration: Asterix ©1985 Les Editions Albert Rene Goscinny - Uderzo\r\n\r\nIf you would like to contribute to Sinclair User please send programs or articles to:\r\nSinclair User\r\nEMAP Business & Computer Publications\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nOriginal programs should be on cassette and articles should be typed. We cannot undertake to return them unless a stamped-addressed envelope is included. Please write 'Program Printout' on the envelopes of all cassettes submitted.\r\n\r\nWe pay £20 for each program printed and £50 for star programs.\r\n\r\nTypeset by Saffron Graphics Ltd, [redacted]\r\nPrinted by Peterboro' Web, [redacted]\r\nDistributed by EMAP Publications Ltd.\r\n\r\n©Copyright 1985 Sinclair User ISSN No 0262-5458\r\n\r\n102,023 Jan-Jun 1985"},"MainText":"Publisher: Melbourne House\r\nPrice: £9.95\r\nMemory: 48K\r\n\r\nWe previewed Melbourne House's superb music program last month, and the final version lives up to expectations. Wham! The Music Box is clearly destined to take a place alongside classic utilities such as Tasword II or Art Studio.\r\n\r\nThe screen displays two staves, which scroll sideways, on which you write the music. The bottom two rows of the keyboard act as a piano keyboard, and all the notes are of a single length. That's not a problem as long as you work out the smallest unit you are going to need and take that as the note size. Longer length notes are simply repetitions of the same note.\r\n\r\nThe program allows you to write two-part music, with a bass line and treble. Four octaves are available, and extra functions include repeating a set pattern, adding in drum sounds - more like scratching sandpaper, but that's the Spectrum for you - and defining your own white noise effects by moving a cursor over various waveforms and selecting the one you want.\r\n\r\nSince the Spectrum can only handle one note at a time, normally, the two-voice music comes as a shock when you first hear it. If you've got Fairlight or Way of the Exploding Fist, those tunes were written with the same routine.\r\n\r\nMusic can be compiled down to code, stored at any reasonable address, for use in your own programs, and a set of POKEs is given to alter speed, and allow you to play tunes one note at a time so that the music can be interlinked with screen action.\r\n\r\nThe alleged pop group Wham! has allowed Melbourne House to convert five of their hit singles to the system, and those tunes are recorded after the main program. Whether or not you enjoy Wham! the results certainly show off the power of the program to good advantage.\r\n\r\nIt is incredibly easy to produce acceptable music from the program. Anybody - absolutely anybody - who writes games or likes mucking about with sound should boogie on down to the stores and buy it.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"25","Denied":false,"Award":"Sinclair User Classic","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Chris Bourne","Score":"5","ScoreSuffix":"/5"}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Overall","Score":"5/5","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Your Computer Issue 12, Dec 1985","Price":"£1","ReleaseDate":"1985-11-21","Editor":"Toby Wolpe","TotalPages":100,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Toby Wolpe\r\nAssistant Editor: Meirion Jones\r\nProduction Editor: Ian Vallely\r\nSoftware Editor: Simon Beesley\r\nCommercial Software Editor: Paul Bond\r\nEditorial Assistant: Lee Paddon\r\nEditorial Secretary: Lynn Dawson\r\nEditorial: [redacted]\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Nick Ratnieks\r\nAssistant Advertisement Manager: Ken Walford\r\nAdvertisement Executive: Kay Filbin\r\nNorthern Office: Chris Shaw\r\nAdvertisement Secretary: Maxine Gill\r\nClassified: Susan Platts\r\nPublisher: Gavin Howe\r\n\r\nYour Computer, [redacted]\r\n©Business Press International Ltd 1985\r\n\r\nPrinted in Great Britain for the proprietors of Business Press International Ltd, [redacted].\r\nISSN 0263-0885\r\nPrinted by Riverside Press Ltd, [redacted], and typeset by Instep Ltd, [redacted]\r\n\r\nSubscriptions: U.K. £14 for 12 issues.\r\nSubscription Enquiries: [redacted]\r\n\r\nABC 131,769 June-December 1984."},"MainText":"ZX Spectrum\r\nMelbourne House\r\nMusic Utility\r\n£9.95\r\n\r\nThere used to be one inviolable certainty to cling to in these changing times - the immutable fact that the Spectrum has just one sound channel. But now even this sacrosanct truth has been rudely, and noisily, shattered by this devilish bit of software which gives the Spectrum two sound channels using the original hardware.\r\n\r\nWham - no connection with the George/Ridley duo, you may be relieved to hear - allows you to compose separate bass and melody lines over a four-octave range and even to include vaguely drum-like effects (but not simultaneously with the notes). Notes are entered and displayed on musical staff and, as they are being played, the notes are depicted by dots bouncing around on a piano keyboard.\r\n\r\nThe hideously named Whampiler allows you to use the tunes you compose to enliven your own programs. The compiled music takes up less than 1K of memory, no matter how complex it is.\r\n\r\nOne snag is that all the notes have to be the same length, although rests can be inserted between notes and the tempo of a piece can be varied.\r\n\r\nW-TJB will probably appeal most to programmers wanting to add music to their graphic masterpieces; as a stand-alone music-making package its staying power is questionable.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"37","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Tony Sacks","Score":"3","ScoreSuffix":"/5"}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Graphics","Score":"2/5","Text":""},{"Header":"Sound","Score":"4/5","Text":""},{"Header":"Playability","Score":"3/5","Text":""},{"Header":"Value For Money","Score":"4/5","Text":""},{"Header":"Overall Rating","Score":"3/5","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"ZX Computing Issue 23, Feb 1986","Price":"£1.95","ReleaseDate":"1986-01-30","Editor":"Ray Elder","TotalPages":124,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Ray Elder\r\nEditorial Assistant: Cliff Joseph\r\nGroup Editor: Dave Bradshaw\r\nGroup Managing Editor: Wendy J Palmer\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Barry Bingham\r\nAdvertisement Copy Controller: Lynn Collis\r\nProduction Controller: Sue Couchman\r\nSoftware Assistant: John Gerard Donovan\r\nPublishing Director: Peter Welham\r\n\r\nOrigination and design by MM Design & Print, [redacted]\r\nPublished by Argus Specialist Publications Ltd, [redacted]\r\n\r\nZX Computing is published bi-monthly on the fourth Friday of the month. Distributed by: Argus Press Sales & Distribution Ltd. [redacted]. Printed by: Garnett Print, Rotherham and London.\r\n\r\nThe contents of this publication including all articles, designs, plans, drawings and programs and all copyright and other intellectual property rights therein belong to Argus Specialist Publications Limited. All rights conferred by the Law of Copyright and other intellectual property rights and by virtue of international copyright conventions are specifically reserved to Argus Specialist Publications Limited and any reproduction requires the prior written consent of Argus Specialist Publications Ltd.\r\n\r\n©Argus Specialist Publications Limited 1986"},"MainText":"MICRO MUSIC\r\n\r\nThis month we look at WHAM, no, not the group but Melbourne House's much vaunted program for the Spectrum.\r\n\r\nWham! The Music Box, is claimed to be is claimed to be the 'complete sound system for your Spectrum' and as such has a lot to live up to.\r\n\r\nThe Spectrum has long been noted for its particularly pathetic sound facilities and, apart from a few exceptions - Romantic Robot's Music Typewriter for instance, programs which are based on this feature are doomed to failure. So what has MH produced to entice us?\r\n\r\nThe answer is a novel and adventurous way of producing (to all intents and purposes) TWO channel sound without any add-on units. No, I couldn't believe it either and loaded in the program with a large dose of scepticism.\r\n\r\nThe program is supplied with five demonstration songs built in, all by Wham (the group) and very impressive they sound too - well, technically speaking anyway.\r\n\r\nVolume is not very loud at the best of times and sound quality on the Spectrum has always been rather dubious, but it is true there is very definitely two channel sound and also, by very clever timing, a rhythmic percussion effect as well.\r\n\r\nEven played on an unadorned Spectrum it's way ahead of anything else, but add a sound boost, such as Cheetah's or the Currah Microspeech or the SSL units which output the sound through the TV speaker - or even the DK Tronics amp, and you have a very respectable music machine.\r\n\r\nON TEST\r\n\r\nAt first I was concerned with the the fact that the instructions only took up six sides of a cassette inlay. I like my instructions to be at idiot level and explained step by step. In fact they are a lesson in brevity and precision. They do use a step by step approach and very quickly and clearly introduce you to using the program.\r\n\r\nThere is no attempt to teach any music at all, the user is assumed to have a background knowledge or to be willing to experiment. The problem with experimenting is that you get things wrong and need to be continually changing them. The editing facilities of some other programs have been a serious problem but with WHAM you can delete back by one note at a time or overwrite selectively. This makes editing quick and simple.\r\n\r\nWhen the program is first loaded you are faced with the 'main' options menu consisting of:\r\n\r\n1. Load a tune.\r\n2. Save a tune.\r\n3. Hear the tune.\r\n4. 'Whampile' the tune.\r\n5. Set tempo.\r\n6. Edit mode.\r\n7. Help page.\r\n\r\nAll these except (4), are straightforward and I'll go into this one later.\r\n\r\nFrom each of these options you are taken to a screen with its own set of controls and options. These are, on the whole, well prompted and easy to use, and a constant display of status is provided. Music is entered by using the keys CAPS SHIFT to SPACE as a piano keyboard and each press produces a semi-quaver on the staves. You have a range of four octaves which you select by pressing keys 1 to 4.\r\n\r\nNotes longer than a semi-quaver are supposedly produced by repeating as many semi-quavers as are required to make up the note. These are played as separate notes to play a quick, staccato semi-quaver trill. To get around this you have to be quite ingenious with the use of rests and tempo techniques.\r\n\r\nOther keys which have functions are, (6) to return to the main menu, (7) to erase the whole tune. (9) rewind, (0) step back one note, (Q) replay tune, (W) set repeat marker, (E) bass drum effect, (R) restart, (T) toggle between channels 1 and 2, (O) fast forward, (P) play single note.\r\n\r\nPERCUSSION\r\n\r\nDrum effects are possible from a simple a simple synthesizer type section. Pressing E places a standard bass drum effect in the music and pressing 8 puts you into 'noise' creation.\r\n\r\nOnce in this option you have the choice of selecting between seven different waveforms and four durations, these are positioned in the music by the Y, U or I keys.\r\n\r\nYou have to be very clever indeed to use these options effectively as the Bass drum takes out one note from one channel and the noise takes up a note from both channels. As you can imagine, this can be very effective but you have to be extremely ingenious to use it to its full.\r\n\r\nWHAMPILE\r\n\r\nThis is one of the main reasons why some people will purchase this program. By using this option you can compile a tune in memory and save it to tape.\r\n\r\nThis saved version can be reloaded and run independently to WHAM and can be incorporated into your own programs to play either note by note as the program operates, or as a one off introduction piece.\r\n\r\nThis does for sound what the graphics utilities did for title screens or HURG did for DIY games. I am impressed, but I must say that as a serious tool for a musician or composer then it is not really of any real use. However, as a fun program it is brilliant. I took it to a school and let the pupils there try it and, although none had any musical knowledge, it fascinated and entertained them for hours. Finally, as a means of getting impressive sounds and music in your own programs it is invaluable, I may be mistaken, but I'm sure but I heard WHAMPILED music in GYROSCOPE, Melbourne House's latest arcade game.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"44","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"ZX Computing Issue 27, Jul 1986","Price":"£1.5","ReleaseDate":"1986-06-26","Editor":"Bryan Ralph","TotalPages":100,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Bryan Ralph\r\nAssistant Editor: Cliff Joseph\r\nConsultant Editor: Ray Elder\r\nAdvertising Managers: Peter Chandler and John McGarry\r\nDesign: Argus Design\r\nA.S.P. Advertising and Editorial [redacted]\r\n\r\nPrinted by Alabaster Passmore and Sons Ltd. [redacted]\r\n\r\nAdvertisement Copy Controller: Lynn Collis\r\n\r\nDistributed by: Argus Press Sales and Distribution Ltd, [redacted]\r\n\r\nZX Computing Monthly is published on the fourth Friday of each month. Subscription rates can be obtained from ZX Subscriptions, [redacted]\r\n\r\nThe contents of this publication, including all articles, designs plans, drawings and other intellectual property rights herein belong to Argus Specialist Publications Limited. All rights conferred by the law of Copyright and other intellectual property rights and by virtue of international copyright conventions are specifically reserved to Argus Specialist Publications Limited and any reproduction requires the prior written consent of the company.\r\n\r\nArgus Specialist Publications Limited. ©1986"},"MainText":"WHAM! (THE MUSIC BOX)\r\nMelbourne House\r\n£7.95\r\n\r\nThe program stands up on its own without the Wham! tie up and I have heard music produced on this used in several games, mostly MH's.\r\n\r\nThe most striking thing about this program is that by clever programming your ears are fooled into hearing two channel sound. Several songs by the duo have been included as demos and pretty impressive they sound.\r\n\r\nOf course now the 128 is here the program is a bit outdated due to the AY sound chip now being used (see next review).\r\n\r\nOnce you've loaded the program a menu appears giving options to Load tune, Save tune, Hear tune, Whampiler, Set tempo, Edit or Help. The instruction insert is a strange mixture of brevity and step by step details. Bits of it were slightly confusing.\r\n\r\nDrum effects can be used, but these use both channels so a musical note cannot be played at the same time. This means a fair bit of ingenuity is needed to use the percussion effectively.\r\n\r\nThe \"Whampiler\" is a great boon, turning a novelty program into a useful utility. This allows you to save your tune in a form which you can use in your own games.\r\n\r\nNote entry is a bit awkward, and needs getting used to. This is not really a program for the musical novice, although such a person could use it successfully, but more a utility for musical computerists or games writers who want the best sounds available in their program.\r\n\r\nIt is quirky to use, editing is easy though, and this is an important factor, with patience and time you can produce the best music/effects possible on the 48K Spectrum.\r\n\r\nI enjoy using it, though dedicated musicians may find its limitations and unusual features off putting. For instance all the notes are entered as semi quavers and longer notes are made up of repeating as many as are required. This means fast single note trills are nearly impossible to do.\r\n\r\nAlthough even a little expression is feasible using the percussion, the end result is still rather robotic.\r\n\r\nScreen display is varied, at times clear and simple and at times rather cluttered. The user is well prompted but sometimes careful scrutiny of the screen is needed to find the info you want.\r\n\r\nAll in a very useful and interesting program, especially if you have an external amp/beep booster attached.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"23","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]}]}]