Mar 10, 2016
Words by Sara Majedi
This month is Music in Our Schools Month, and to commemorate the event, Google has launched the Chrome Music Lab as a part of their Chrome Experiments. Other experiments on the site include virtual dominoes, 3D color scheme generators, and virtually infinite cities, along with hundreds of other projects either created by Google or by creative people around the world.
The idea behind the music lab was to make learning music more accessible by using the Internet - a technology that is open to everybody. This allows for music to be created, analyzed, and visualized in the browser without the need for plug-ins.
The technology includes: Google Chrome, Web Audio API (allows for developers to create and analyze sound), and WebGL (renders interactive 2D and 3D graphics), along with other more intricate technologies.
Now that I’ve geeked out about the technology, the experiment itself includes tools such as rhythm generators where you can create your own beats with the drum sounds that are available, a spectrogram that visualizes sounds such as flutes, birds, wine glasses, and even your own voice, and a voice spinner that, well, spins your voice to whatever tempo or pitch you are looking for. The experiment includes several other interactive demos that you can spend days playing with - the Kandinsky demo is one of my favorites, and a snapshot of what I’ve made is below (just call me Picasso).
Have fun creating!
Image: Chrome Music Lab