A new musical keyboard exploits the potential of the 128's enhanced sound capabilities. Toni Baker tinkles the ivories

This is a system comprising a musical piano-style keyboard and software to go with it, and an optional amplifier/speaker. The keyboard measures about 56cm across and has 37 keys covering three octaves. The feel of the keys is very good, and they react well to the touch.

To operate the system is very easy. The keyboard connects to the Spectrum via a ribbon cable which plugs into an interface, which in turn plugs into the edge connector at the back of the Spectrum. You must have a Spectrum 128. The system won't work on a 48K machine. Then you just plug the Spectrum in, select "128 BASIC" from the main menu, and LOAD the software. The version I was supplied with was on cassette, but I had no trouble whatsoever in adapting theprogram to a microdrive version, since all of the LOAD and SAVE commands were in Basic - just change LOAD to LOAD * "M"|1; in line 100, and SAVE to auto-run from line 10.

The software I was supplied with gave a menu on-screen allowing a choice of eight different instruments. They were Piano, Strings, Organ, Popcorn, Evolution, Siren, Synth and Hawaiian. The blurb in the HCCS manual says that sixteen voices are avaiable for a disc drive version (and if so I don't see why those same sixteen voices should not be available for a microdrive version, but perhaps they will be). The sound is reproduced through the television speaker, and also through the (optional) Echosound Speaker/Amplifier. The best sound is obtained by turning the TV sound right down and just using the amp, which is connected to the Spectrum via the MIC socket normally used for saving programs to cassette. The sound quality thus produced is excellent, and I must say that even without the amp the sound produced from the TV speaker isn't bad either.

The system makes use of the Spectrum's in-built sound chip, and is thus capable of playing up to three notes at once, which means that chords may be played. If more than three keys are pressed, then only the three higher of the notes will be played - a system which seems to work very well.

As for the sounds themselves - well, some are good and some are bad. The piano sound is good, but the keys are not prssure-sensitive, which means that, if you hit a note vigorously, it sounds exactly the same as pressing the note gently. This means that you can't really use it *as* a piano. The strings sound is in fact a violin sound, although you can easily alter it (as you can all of the sounds). The organ sound is exceptionally good. Popcorn is a short blippy sound like that on the single of the same name which hit the charts a few years back. Evolution is one of those weird sounds which starts off silent and then slowly builds up, which makes it ideal for playing slow, spacey music on. Siren is even weirder - if you hold one key down and keep it pressed it sounds rather like a police siren (one of those American ones) but the music you can get out of it is quite unbelievable. The synth sound is very nice; it's both beautiful and melodic. Finally we have the Hawaiian guitar sound, which is equally as nice.

All of the sounds are adaptable. Select the sound you wish to adapt and press the space bar. You will then be greeted with a screen like that of figure one. Now the up and down keys may be used to select the aspecct you wish to change, while the left and right keys will change the actual vaues. I found that selecting values 10/10/4/4/4 from the "piano" sound actually turn it into quite a nice flute sound. When you've designed your sound you press the space bar once more, which returns you to the main menu. You can now rename the instrument on the menu by just pressing the alphabetic keys (e.g. FLUTE) followed by ENTER, but note that only capital letters will be accepted. If the program was loaded with CAPS LOCK on then all letters will come out as capitals, otherwise the letters will be ignored unless CAPS SHIFT used. You can now play your new instrument.

Instead of having to recreate new sounds every time you switch the thing on, you can load and save sounds very easily. Pressing the semi-colon key produces the message "SAVE filename" at the bottom of the screen. You can escape from this by entering the empty string, otherwise you must input a filename. All of your sounds will be saved with this filename. Similarly, by pressing the quotes key you get "LOAD flename" and are able to retrieve previously saved sounds. The software supplied loads and saves to and from cassette; however, by changing lines 220 and 320 I was able to instead use the microdrive. This eliminates the problem of having to line the cassette up before loading in data, and is much faster.

The main display also allows you to change octave by pressing the left and right keys. You can go from -2 to +2 in steps of one octave. You can also change the pitch by pressing the up and down keys. Here you can go from -96 to +96 and each step represents a quarter of a semi-tone. By playing with these controls whilst playing a note you can get some good warble effects.

HCCS say there should be more software for the keyboard in future. We are promised a record and playback facility, and a repeat facility which could provide a backing track. I haven't seen these options, but then my package came without an instruction book, so maybe I've just missed them.

The keyboard and software is incredibly cheap for what it is at fifty quid (Well, £49.95). The Speaker/Amplifier is forty quid (£39.95) but if you've got one of these hi-fi stereo tellys you probably won't need it. Actually it's possible to take the sound from the Spectrum's MIC socket into any hi-fi amplifier, so if you've already got one, you don't need HCCS's. In any case, the amp is good, although I would question its value for money, since it puts up the cost of the keyboard system by nearly 80%. The keyboard, though, is certainly well worth buying and is exceptional value for money.