Chrome Music Lab

March 13, 2016 10:03 AM

Google’s Chrome Music Lab [Chrome recommended, not sure if it is required] is a collection of Chrome “experiments,” all featuring Web technologies like WebGL that run inside the Google Chrome browser. Google said that it created the experiments as part of Music In Our Schools month, but the experience should appeal to adults and kids alike: It’s like a Web-based Exploratorium for sound.
posted by hippybear (23 comments total)

All of the experiments seemed to run just fine in Safari, too.
posted by hippybear at 10:06 AM on March 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

These are lovely. I'm impressed with how inviting they are, easy to understand without any textual documentation. Also fun music toys.

I'm also impressed with how far along the Web Audio API has come. It seems like just a couple of years ago, getting a sample to play even close to on time was nearly impossible. Now we have modular synthesis with precise timing with a simple browser API to program it. Pretty great.

And yeah, these experiments should work the same in all modern browsers. One of the joys of HTML5 is all the big browsers agree it's best to implement the same standards. Even Microsoft, if a bit late and reluctantly.
posted by Nelson at 10:37 AM on March 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is a lot of fun! Thanks for the post.
posted by Fister Roboto at 10:44 AM on March 13, 2016

I'd put "precise" in scarequotes because there's no way I would recommend a performing artist rely on a web browser's responsiveness and consistency in concert but yeah, the distinction is close to hair-splitting at this point, and forever getting closer.

Chrome Status is an interesting (albeit, obviously, very inside-baseball) inspection not just of the Chrome team's own plans for feature additions but of the status of those features in other browsers and the web development community. Ambient light events (responding to, and controlling the browser UI, based on how light or dark the room you're in is), animated PNG (like animated GIF, but, uh, higher-bandwidth)*, and geofencing (not only can your browser know where you are, but if you're in an art museum and visiting their website at the same time, your phone or tablet can display information based on what you're looking at)† are all Coming Soon To A Browser Near You.
*(Also alpha-masking around animated figures, of course - but that's sufficiently difficult to do properly in GIF that I can't wait to see how gnarly it looks in PNG.)
†(Aside from the Big Brother implications, this would also probably obsolete 99% of what public QR codes are used for.)
posted by ardgedee at 10:54 AM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

What larks. Loved the arpeggiator... and one wonders how much could be done for real musical/exploratory synthesis if people spent less time trying to implement skeuomorphic instruments and mixing desks and started to seriously investigate real-time ways to control synthesis software through better UIs. I'm sure they have, but I haven't seen anything really intriguing yet.
posted by Devonian at 11:15 AM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

A notice about this popped up under the fantastic theremin Google Doodle a couple of days ago. These are some fun toys, although I think I learned more about sound from messing around with an oscilloscope in the 60's than from the admittedly more colorful spectogram toy they have. It's nice to give a shout-out to the Tesla of the art world, the color/sound/spirit philosopher/artist Kandinsky, although I have to admit I don't quite get the relationship between the sounds and the visuals here...Nice to see the perennial Circle of Fifths again, superimposed on the color wheel.
posted by kozad at 11:17 AM on March 13, 2016

Neat, thanks for posting!
posted by carter at 11:43 AM on March 13, 2016

One of the joys of HTML5 is all the big browsers agree it's best to implement the same standards. Even Microsoft, if a bit late and reluctantly.


These all seem to be working correctly in Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 for Phones and I am deriving great joy from them and that fact mutually ☺
posted by The Legit Republic of Blanketsburg at 11:49 AM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oddly, it does not seem to run in Firefox, is that just me?
posted by Canageek at 12:35 PM on March 13, 2016

Wow, thanks for posting this! Very cool, especially that it is done completely in HTML/JS. The only bad thing about it is that it eats battery like mad. More than Pinball Arcade, even. I suppose that shouldn't be too surprising since it's all JS, so isn't optimized at the CPU instruction level.
posted by wierdo at 1:38 PM on March 13, 2016

Thanks! My three year old is going to love this.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:40 PM on March 13, 2016

Canageek, most of the modules work in Firefox on Android. In some cases a bit less smoothly than in Chrome. (Rhythm gets crackly and Strings loads but doesn't do anything)
posted by wierdo at 1:42 PM on March 13, 2016

The "Harmonics" page was driving me crazy, because the notes sounded out-of-tune.

Checked with a frequency analyzer and, sure enough, they are out-of-tune.
posted by eye of newt at 2:02 PM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

Metafilter: checked with a frequency analyzer
posted by el io at 2:04 PM on March 13, 2016

Canageek: "Oddly, it does not seem to run in Firefox, is that just me?"

Nope. I had to blow the dust off of Chrome for this.
posted by Splunge at 3:06 PM on March 13, 2016

I've just started delving more deeply into musical improv and this is 1. super fun and 2. useful and relevant to my interests. Yes.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 3:17 PM on March 13, 2016

Before checking, I may have exclaimed, "I bet this is a hippybear post!" Yes.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 3:21 PM on March 13, 2016

Perfect? No.

Interesting? Yes.

Fun. Actually, yes.

Still worried as all hells about turning web browsers into general purpose VMs? Oh my yes.
posted by eriko at 6:42 AM on March 14, 2016

Well the harmonics are going to give you pitches in just intonation, right? They are going to be sharp (iirc), compared to the tempered scale (this is why the common practice of tuning guitar strings to the harmonic at the 7th fret of the adjacent string is incorrect - the only harmonics that you should use in tuning are the octaves at the 12th and 5th frets; the octaves are in tune )
posted by thelonius at 7:20 AM on March 14, 2016

I'm using the Voice Spinner to teach myself to talk backwards.
posted by mattamatic at 7:56 AM on March 14, 2016

That gum you like is going to come back in style
posted by Nelson at 8:50 AM on March 14, 2016

This is so very cool- thanks hippybear!
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 1:50 PM on March 14, 2016

Ooooooh I like the arpeggiator.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:04 AM on March 15, 2016