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From: abm88@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Morley A.B.)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: music composition languages
Message-ID: <8153@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: 13 Jun 91 16:04:27 GMT
References: <2672@m1.cs.man.ac.uk>
Sender: news@ecs.soton.ac.uk
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In <2672@m1.cs.man.ac.uk> snowdond@r2.cs.man.ac.uk (D.N.Snowdon (MSc PJ)) writes:


>  Has anyone got any information on the AMPLE music language. It was
>available for the Acorn BBC micro, but I've heard that it made it to
>other machines.
>               thanks
>                       Dave (snowdond@cs.man.ac.uk)

Yes, I've got a copy of it.  The hardware was a box that plugs into
a BBC's 1MHz port and included 16 tone generators each capable of
generating an arbitary waveform.  How they made it so cheap (200
quit initially, I bought one for 30) I can't imagine.  It was
developed for ACorn by a co. called Hybrid (NOT Hybrid Arts, also
in comp. music buisiness).  When Acorn finished selling the prod.
Hybrid continued to develop it but a co. called Peartree(?) tried
(it was rumoured) to produce a board for a PC. (I think!).

The original language was called AMPLE BCE.  Hybrid later
altered it a bit (incl. made it run from ROM) calling it AMPLE
Nucleus.

It's very like FORTH - It's a stack-based language.  All numbers
are 16 bit integers.

2 3 4 + * nout

prints "14" (nout prints the number on the top of the stack).
Its got the control structures you'd expect.

Music?  Well, the letters a-g are the musical notes.  A change
to capitals indicates a change up an octave, to lowercase is
down (symbols < and > do this expiccitly).  Eg

CDEFGABCDEFGABC^ Cbagfedcbagfedc

plays a rising 2 octave acale of C, one rest (^) and a
descending scale, finishing of the same note.

Oh, I nearly forgot - it's multi-tasking!  On a 6502!
And it works!

This is from memory - I've got the manual at home, Email me
for more info.  I believe someone wrote an adventure prog
in Ample Nucleus.

Andrew Morley - Flossie | abm88@uk.ac.soton.ecs ... abm88@ecs.soton.uk.ac
                        | University Of Southampton, UK.