[ALUG] beep beep

I find it hard to believe that such a simple thing is eluding me. I just have to be looking in the wrong place. I want to make the speakers on my PC go beep or beeeep. Currently writing a project in C but I'm pretty flexible on source language. Running ubuntu 12.04. Any pointers, even those that make me go "Doh"! greatly appreciated. Nev