COMPUTE!’s Gazette – Volume 1 – Issue 1 – July, 2025
Jerry White
Welcome back to The Atari Outpost, your dedicated corner in COMPUTE!’s Gazette for everything 8-bit Atari! This month, we’re tuning up the POKEY chip for a real treat. We’re thrilled to feature a special contribution from a name familiar to the Compute! family, the talented Jerry White, who is back with a fantastic suite of BASIC type-in programs designed to get your Atari making some incredible music.
So, warm up those keyboards and prepare to orchestrate some classic 8-bit tunes!
Programming Sound in Atari BASIC
Jerry White has graciously shared an original composition, a heartfelt song titled “To My Wife…” that he wrote many years ago and has now set to music with lyrics in a new BASIC program. It’s a personal piece from Jerry, who notes that he and his wife are a combined 153 years old. His hope is that readers will not only enjoy the tune but also learn something from the program’s structure and perhaps be inspired to create their own BASIC music.
How it Works: A Peek Under the Hood
Jerry’s program is a masterclass in the fundamentals of Atari BASIC sound programming. Here’s a breakdown of the techniques he uses:
- Timing with JIFFYs: The duration of each musical note is controlled by the Atari’s internal JIFFY countdown timer, a term used to describe 1/60th of a second. This allows for precise control over the rhythm of the song.
- Lyrics and Rests: The program cleverly syncs lyrics to the music. Words are preceded by a space, and multi-syllable words are broken across multiple notes. Special characters are used to control the flow: a “%” indicates the end of a line of text and creates a musical rest, while a “*” ends a line without a rest.
- Creating a Rich Sound: While the program doesn’t use harmony in the traditional sense, it creates a richer sound by using two of the POKEY’s sound channels. One channel plays the main note, while the second plays the same note one octave lower.
- Simplicity and Control: To keep the type-in listing manageable, the program doesn’t use complex sound shaping. The volume for each channel is set at a constant level, though Jerry encourages users to experiment with changing these values.
The program itself is filled with helpful REM statements that provide additional information and explain how everything works. Jerry also offers a handy tip: if you use the BREAK key while a note is playing, the sound will continue indefinitely. The quickest way to silence it is to type the END command.
This is a fantastic opportunity to learn directly from a seasoned programmer and to make your Atari sing. The full type-in program listing for “To My Wife…” is available in this month’s issue.
Read the full story and discover more about the world of retro computing in the first issue of COMPUTE!’s Gazette in 35 years!
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