Design Lab

Catalogue / Plate 32← All plates

Notes that meet become a chord

A pocket sequencer where coloured notes join into chords and your loop leaves as a WAV file.

32 / Sound · SVG · composition

Sampleton Looproom

A pocket music studio

Some notes
belong together.

A dot is a note. A column is a moment.
Join notes into chords, then give them a pulse.

First light8 steps / C pentatonicReady when you are

9 notes · 2 chord steps

A starting point

Make it yours

Start with First light, or tap the score to make it yours. Sound is off.

Tap a space to add a note. Tap a note to remove it. Drag to move it.
Keyboard: Tab into the score, arrows to explore, Space to change a note.

One loop is four beats. Neighbouring notes in a column join into a chord.
Nothing plays until you press play. Turn sound on to listen.

Remake it

Build one interactive web page: Sampleton Looproom is an eight-step music studio. Add or drag pentatonic notes, see neighbouring pitches join on the same step, choose a voice, tempo and swing, then play the loop with sound explicitly enabled. Three starter scores, undo and offline WAV export turn the interaction into a small instrument.

Set it on an invented business called Sampleton, with its own drawn or generated pictures and no one else's files. It suits: Music discovery, creative learning and a hands-on instrument where a drawn connection explains simultaneous notes. Do not let it fail the way this kind of piece usually does: Sound that starts without consent, or connections that imply musical timing they do not have. Bridges only join nearby notes on the same step. The score works by keyboard, sound begins off, reduced motion hides the playhead and exported audio is rendered offline.

It must work with the keyboard, on a phone, with reduced motion respected and no text under 12px. Tell me which libraries you chose and why.
Notes: when it suits, when it does not, how it fails
When it suits
Music discovery, creative learning and a hands-on instrument where a drawn connection explains simultaneous notes.
When it does not
Professional arranging, precise recording or a page whose content needs to be read over an active soundtrack.
How it fails
Sound that starts without consent, or connections that imply musical timing they do not have. Bridges only join nearby notes on the same step. The score works by keyboard, sound begins off, reduced motion hides the playhead and exported audio is rendered offline.

Made by Codex from Pete's brief for an alternative application of colours that meet, for the invented Sampleton Looproom.