ABC (was Re: [Coco] Re: [Color Computer] PC Lyra)

[LM]

Mike Knudsen wrote:
> Wow, BNF specs!  I remember those from CS grad school.

Have been working with BNF a lot lately.  Just finished programming a 
Pascal interpreter that uses an augmented transition network parser for a 
compiler course for my Masters.  Am hoping I can reuse the ATN parser for 
some other projects.

>What are these OPL-2/3 chips?  Sound generators, or programmable 
>controllers like the STAMP series?

Yamaha FM synthesis chip used in the earlier Sound Blasters. 
You could program them to play notes.  I still have a table of 
settings using FM synthesis to emulate some of the MIDI instruments, 
probably pretty useless now since the modern sound cards appear to be
using instrument samples over FM synthesis.  There was some interesting 
information on programming sound cards on a PC in the mx directories at:
ftp://x2ftp.oulu.fi/pub/msdos/programming/
but most of it's probably very outdated with all the newer sound cards 
on the market now.

>Trouble is, it's VERY hard to get such programs into my PC for
>sharing, since my "new" PC doesn't have a 5" drive,

That was one of the reasons I decided to put my own system together the 
last time I upgraded my PC machine.  There were things I just had to have
in my computer that they're not selling in the prebuilt systems.  When my
last 5 and 1/4 went out, someone gave me three other old ones, so I have
some replacements for now.  Eventually hoping to get everything moved to
CD, but that's going to take a long time.  Was very surprised tape works
so well on the PC.  It was really slow to store files that way on the
CoCo, but it looks like a very reliable method to move files between the
CoCo and a PC (although still slow).

If you ever do dig up the music program, I'd love to see it.

> Laura, if you have OS-9 or Linux, you could try my UltiMusE program,
> whereby you use the mouse to draw sheet music on the screen, then play
> it.

I'm currently working on trying to get Linux or FreeBSD up and running on
my machine (using the Antec Dataswap to swap out hard drives).  Every time
I've tried to get Linux or FreeBSD working, I've always run into hardware
issues.  Just brought the whole machine to a local Linux users group to
see if they'd have better luck.  They installed Red Hat 9 and things like
my mouse and my ISA Hayes modem aren't working.  If I ever get the kinks
out, I'll be sure to check your program out.  Right now, to compose and
print sheet music, I've been typing it into a text editor using ABC and
and using abcm2ps and ghostscript to view or print it to a laser printer.  
(Think an ABC to UltiMusE converter program would be a great idea.)
Have been doing a lot of searching for public domain music lately to
convert to midi music (which is one of the reasons I started the pdsongs
mailing list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pdsongs).  Have some
interesting Karaoke midi files I'm working on based on pd music sources.
Hoping to get some more and some day create my own music CD for fun (using
midi to play instruments and I'm doing the vocals).

Best wishes.

Laura
http://www.distasis.com/recipes/music.htm