Here's a very useful program for anyone owning a micro and dabbling in music technicalities. Certainly, once you start tuning instruments, you'll find a knowledge of note frequencies most desirable. It's written in BASIC and will run with minimal changes on most micros.

The program prints a table of frequencies in linear steps that you can specify. When the program is entered, you simply state the start frequency in Hertz (variable F0) and the step size in Cents (variable C). There are 100 Cents in every semitone, corresponding to the black and white notes on a piano. If you require a table of descending frequencies, then quote negative cents.

The listing here is for the Sharp MZ-80K and the main point to watch for is that you enter 0's or 0's correctly. When using a Sinclair (e.g. Spectrum), make the following changes: Line 5 should be CLS; lines 20 and 95 insert GO TO after THEN; lines 35, 85, 120, 125 and 145 statements should start with LET; lines 80, 135 and 140 insert LET after THEN; and finally insert new statement at line 106 LET C1=0.

Example 1 shows 1 octave in semitone steps from A=440 (A above middle C).

Example 2 shows 8 octaves in octave jumps from A=55.

Example 3 shows 2 octaves in quartertone steps descending from E=1320.