Music

This Chapter explains how to exploit the superb sound capabilities of the Amiga. It will deal with simple sound effects and the use of music in AMOS Professional programs.

Generally, the sound capabilities of a television set are terrible. To release the full potential of AMOS Professional stereo sound, a hi-fi system or personal stereo should first be connected to the Amiga's pair of stereo phono sockets.

All AMOS Professional sound commands operate independently from games and utility routines, so that they can never interfere with your programming. On the contrary, they should enhance your work in any way that you chose, acting as markers, adding realism, soothing, shocking or providing comic relief.

Ready-made sound effects
Any imaginable sound effect can be used in an AMOS Professional program, whether it is natural, synthetic, pre-recorded or composed by you. In fact the choice is so vast that the next two Chapters are devoted to the wonders of sound samples! A whole bank of pre-recorded effects has been prepared for your use, but there are three common sound effects that can be called up by their own commands and used for testing and punctuating your routines.

BOOM
instruction: generate explosive sound effect
Boom

By making use of interrupts to simulate "white noise", the BOOM command plays a realistic explosive sound effect. This does not delay the program at all, so it may be necessary to use WAIT between successive explosions, or to create ricochet and echo effects For example:

E> Curs Off : Centre "Thunderbolt and Lightning"
   Flash 1, "(FFF,1)(000,147)(A5F,2)
   Boom : Wait 150: Boom : Cls
   Centre "Very Very Frightening"
   Wait 50 : Boom

SHOOT
instruction: generate percussive sound effect
Shoot

The SHOOT command generates a simple sound effect in exactly the same way as BOOM. For example:

E> Shoot : Wait 25: Shoot : Print "Ouch!"

BELL
instruction: generate pure tone
Bell
Bell pitch

Unlike the built-in explosive sound effects, BELL produces a simple pure tone.