31 Oct
2008
31 Oct
'08
12:27 p.m.
On Fri, 2008-10-31 at 10:47 -0400, Dave Phillips wrote:
Greetings,
For no reason beyond boredom I decided to pester this list with an OT
topic or two. So, without further delay:
What was your first computer ?
Sinclair ZX81
And for extra points:
What was the first music/sound software you used that really hooked you
into this making-music-with-computers fad ?
ZX Spectrum and RAM Music Machine - simple 8-bit sampler and MIDI
interface borrowed from a mate at school. I ended up writing custom DSP
code in assembler to apply echo, distortion and filtering effects to
incoming audio. This must have been about 20 years ago or more - I was
in 3rd year at high school, so I was probably about 13 or 14.
I also wrote a thing that triggered a couple of envelopes and output
four different squarewaves through a modified printer port on the
Spectrum, allowing me to write beepy tunes and pass the results through
a homemade filter bank and homemade tape echo.
I wish I could find those old tapes. I wonder if I could recreate them?
Probably wouldn't be the same...
Gordon