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BHQ001 - MISTER BEEP - Monophonic Generator
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Hello. 

Music from ZX Spectrum 48K / Timex Computer 2048 comes from 1-bit monophonic generator. 
It's like 1-bit picture. One can only turn "on" or "off" pixels. One can 'simulate' grey scale by using dithering. 
ZX48K music is kind of sonic dithering. My weapon of choice has only one channel with only one volume level (sound turn on) or silence - (sound turn off). One bit. 
However thanks to some brilliant programists, you can hear there many channels and volume levels. Because of "sonic dithering". 

I made this small EP "MONOPHONIC GENERATOR" for Berlin HQ, as they were kind enough (and brave enough, hehehe) to express interest in my 1-bit chiptunes. 

The album contains ZX Spectrum 48K versions of famous in my country (and supposedly not only) electronic music songs from artists like 
Tangerine Dream
Kraftwerk
Vangelis
Marek Bilinski
and one my song (as a bonus) in style of another classic electronic band - LaserDance. 
Also you can find here one more bonus track made by Factor6. 
I added a cover of Amiga 500 famous artist SLL too because back in the days I was listening Amiga music as much as regular electronic music artist. :) Ah, beautiful times. :) 

Well, maybe a "cover" word is a bit of exaggeration, I would rather say they're music-miniatures based on classic electronic music, with huge amount of attempts to overcome hardware limitations. 
Music generated by Spectrum's native sound-source - Z80 chip - normally has only one channel of square-wave 1-bit sound, like I said before. But Z80 is also ZX SPECTRUM's Central Processing Unit (CPU) so due to its 3,5Mhz activity the sound is expandable to even 8 channels (software mixing) and the machine is able to generate really interesting envelopes (as described below).
Z80 chip produces all sounds and sends them into BEEPER and AUDIO-OUT connector of ZX SPECTRUM (jack) through ULA chip (which is a 1-bit transducer). 
On this way we can achieve: 

- 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. We could say that everything mentioned above is theoretically impossible to make on this sound config. But... it still works! 



*******************Tracklist & soft used:*******************

01. Mister Beep - Ohm Sweet Ohm (Kraftwerk)
Sintetizador De Voz and Orfeus Music Assembler 
3 channels of sound (2 tones plus drums). The editor has several envelopes, also I often use two the same (or two slightly different) tones simultaneously to obtain more interesting instruments. Sometimes it's really hard to do. :) 

02. Mister Beep - Alpha (Vangelis)
Sonido 48K and The Music Box
It has 2 channels of sound at most but I used to say that songs made on "Music Box" have only 1,5 of channel. :) It's because when tones play then you have 2 chnls, but when drums are playing - nothing more can, so then it's only 1 chnl. That's why actually the tune has not full 2 channels of sound. ;) Like I said before, making such music reminds me embroidering a tapestry or a carpet: you must put sounds among lonely drums. ;) Kind of back-breaking work but can be done. ;) Also, to achieve delay and reverb effect that you can notice (it's normally impossible on this editor) I put two the same tones simultaneously which gives me 2 levels of volume and better depth of sound. 

03. Mister Beep - Logos Part 1 (Tangerine Dream)
Synthesizer KX-5 and Orfeus Music Assembler 
3 channels of sound (2 tones plus drums). As I wrote above, the editor has several envelopes, also I often use two the same (or two slightly different) tones simultaneously to obtain more interesting instruments. Also in this way I can achieve delay effect (with 2 levels of volume). 

04. Mister Beep - Dom w Dolinie Mgiel (Marek Bilinski)
Sonido 48K and The Music Studio
It has 2 channels but here drums can work along with one channel of tones which makes the work a little bit easier. Also I still can use tricks described above (with 2 levels of volume and additional envelopes). 

05. Mister Beep - Kometenmelodie 2 (Kraftwerk)
Sonido 48K and Orfeus Music Assembler 
3 channels of sound (2 tones plus drums). Rest like above. 

06. Mister Beep - Ucieczka z tropiku (Marek Bilinski)
NoiseFX Machine Code Sound Effects and ZX-7 Polyphonic Musical Instrument
This is an 8-channels engine although this time I used not more than 6 voices (I didn't feel like I needed all powers here). It has only tones, no drums. Drums can be done by some special tricks but then sound might be kinda noisy, so I resigned this time. 

07. Mister Beep - SLL3 (SLL)
Orfeus Music Assembler 
3 channels of sound (2 tones plus drums). Really hard additional work with mixing tones (like I described above) to get this typical "fluent" Spectrum48 sound which I like the most from 80s games. :) 

08. Factor6 - The Robots (Kraftwerk) /BONUS TRACK/
Hlas and The Music Studio
2 channels, where drums can work along with one channel of tones. 

09. Mister Beep - Cosmic Escape /BONUS TRACK/
Sample Tracker 2.0 and GarageBEEP
The only MOD-like music here. 3 channels of fully digital sound. All samples must fit in about 35Kb of RAM. :) But can be done. ;)  The chiptune-intro has been made on GarageBEEP 1-channel editor, for really hardcore fans of Speccy48 music (1 channel, square wave only ;) ). 

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Also I used several sound-synthesizers and speech synthesizers for intros of these songs. They force Z80 to really hard work. ;) 

Cover-art picture has been made by me. It isn't any cool one but I consider it suitable to the album. 

I do hope you like the production, at least as a break among 4-bit, 8-bit and 16-bit chiptune/micromusic releases. ;) 

Kind regards,
MISTER BEEP
02.06.2009

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CC: BY-NC-ND
This album is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported license.
That means you can share this with your friends and do whatever as long as you...
1)Attribute MISTER BEEP as the author (but not in any way that suggests that he endorses you or your use of the work) 
2)Do not use this work for commercial purposes and
3)Do not alter, transform or build upon this work.