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Making Your Graphing Calculator a Musical Instrument

Posted by samzenpus on from the soothe-the-savage-mathematician dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Thanks to a recently published open source music editor/sequencer, you can now create music on Texas Instruments graphing calculators. The complexity of the sound is impressive (video) for such a simple device, which does not feature any dedicated sound hardware. HoustonTracker 2 is open source, and is available for the TI-82, 83, 83Plus, and 84Plus.

4 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. So basically 1-track MOD tracker by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is cool, but we were software mixing doing this on the Apple ][ and PC/Amiga ages ago with FastTracker, ScreamTracker, etc, etc.
    i.e.
    Tech. Specs for the TI-32: Zilog Z80 @ 6 MHz

    I was more impressed with "Oscillofun":

    * https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    1. Re:So basically 1-track MOD tracker by es330td · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I remember writing down the frequencies of every note so that we could encode a song into an HP48.

      You certainly did it the hard way. A=440 hz. The ratio between any two adjacent half steps is 2^-12 so one can calculate any pitch given a note name and octave. A friend wrote a program for our 48SX's that would take a file of the format {t=60 {notename octavenumber duration}...} (the first term is the tempo, duration is 1 for whole note, 2 for half note, 4 for quarter, etc.) and convert it to the format "freq dur BEEP" so we could input songs directly from sheet music. I still have the program on my HP48SX twenty years later and still have the interpreted William Tell Overture and Imperial March.

  2. Pshaw! by ArhcAngel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Call me when it can do the Hallelujah Chorus

    --
    "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
  3. Now *this* is news for nerds! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't understand where all the negative comments are coming from. To get that out of a pathetic 6 MHz little calculator with no sound hardware is awesome! This is what being a nerd is all about. This is the best news post I've seen on this site in months.