I stumbled upon this Google website awhile back when I was looking for fun, interactive music websites that a young child could enjoy. My daughter wasn’t quite 1 year old when I found this site, and she immediately fell in love with the variety of experiments. Her favorite one is still Rhythm and she regularly asks to play the “monkey game.” My favorite experiment in Kandinsky. I love the fusion of drawing with sound.
To all my students, I would love to hear about you favorite experiments. I hope you will create your own song using Song Maker and email me it.
Love, Amy
Chrome Music Lab, as you probably have guessed, runs best on a Chrome browser. There are 13 interactive experiments for you to enjoy. Here is a brief overview of each one:
- Song Maker
To make a song, add notes by clicking the grid. Then, share your song with a link. You can also use a MIDI keyboard or sing a note into your mic. - Rhythm
Rhythms are patterns of sound in time. The most common rhythms repeat every four beats, but it can also be every three, five, six, or more. Click on the grid to build your own rhythms. - Spectrogram
A spectrogram is a picture of sound. A spectrogram shows the frequencies that make up the sound, from low to high, and how they change over time, from left to right. With this experiment you can compare spectrograms of different sounds, or use the mic to see what your own sounds look like. - Chords
A basic chord is made up of three notes. Tap a note on the piano to play a chord starting on that note. - Sound Waves
Sounds travel through the air like waves through water – but a lot faster. The blue dots represent air molecules bouncing back and forth as sound travels through them. Tap the magnifying glass to zoom in and see a red line graphing the position of one molecule, tracing the shape of the wave. - Arpeggios
An arpeggio is a chord played one note at a time. This experiment lets you play arpeggios in different patterns. Tap the wheel to explore major and minor chords. - Kandinsky
This experiment is inspired by Wassily Kandinsky, an artist who compared painting to making music. It turns anything you draw – lines, circles, triangles, or scribbles – into sound. - Melody Maker
Grids like this one are a common interface for creating melodies. Time moves left to right and pitch goes up to down. Tap to add notes, then use the buttons on the bottom to play and change your melody. - Voice Spinner
Spin the spinner like a record player – slow, fast, forward, backward – to hear how it affects the sound. You can also record your own voice, or other sounds around you. The pitch of your voice gets higher when spun faster, and lower when spun slower. - Harmonics
The harmonic series is a set of frequencies with a simple relationship: twice as fast, three times as fast, four times, and so on. Musical intervals emerge from this natural phenomenon, such as the octave and the major chord (like the opening notes of “Star Spangled Banner”). - Piano Roll
Originally, a piano roll was a roll of paper that you fed into a self-playing piano to make it play a piece. This experiment is inspired by piano rolls. You can watch the notes flow by, scrub it back and forth, and change the sounds. - Oscillators
An oscillator makes sound by vibrating at a steady rate, known as its frequency. Drag your finger up and down to change the oscillator’s frequency, or swipe to hear different types of oscillators. To hear a really slow oscillator, pick the square shape and touch the very bottom of your screen. - Strings
This experiment lets you explore the natural mathematical relationship between a string’s length and its pitch. For example, the second string is half the length of the first, and it plays the same note an octave higher.