Chrome adds Song Maker to Music Lab

The tool, simply called Song Maker, is a sequencer that allows people to create their own songs with the help of virtual instruments such as the marimba, piano, conga, synths, strings, drums and electronic percussion. Users can loop their compositions and toggle between different sounds in real time.

They can also select their preferred tempo, range, scale and beats per bar as well as connect a MIDI keyboard and microphone. The notes that are played or sung will then appear in the bars of the sequencer.

Chrome Music Lab was created as a music experiment website in 2016.

“The experiments are all built with the Web Audio API, a freely accessible, open-web standard that lets developers create and manipulate sound right in the browser,” Google said in a blog post. We’re also providing open-source code so that others can build new experiments based on what we’ve started.”

The browser-based platform also features a rhythm experiment used for sequencing beats as well as the Kandinsky, which allows users to draw images that are then translated into music.

The concept of this feature was inspired by the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) who believed painting was like music. “Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul," Kandinsky said.

The website has other features such as Arpeggios, which uses the circle of fifths to illustrate how different progressions relate to one another. It also offers the Strings function where users can explore the natural mathematical relationship between a string’s length and its pitch.

Although Chrome Music Lab can’t be used by professionals, it’s a good platform for those who want to learn about music in a stimulating online environment. The platform is especially useful for teaching children about the basics of music and audio software by blending art and technology.