CH 1 CELLOSAVEDREC
BPM
20 BARS
PRESS PLAY
Sound
Play
Oct
0
Read
Level
Recordings are saved as MP3 on this device, like your shelf. They stay until you delete them or clear this browser's data.
Starglyphs are letters drawn as one continuous path across a five pointed star. This instrument plays those paths. Type into a channel with the glyph keys, or with your own keyboard, and the letters sound exactly as they are written.
The star has five directions, so it has five pitches: C, D, E, G and A. The direction of a stroke sets its pitch and its length sets how long it lasts. Where the pen doubles back the note is played loud; a soft turn plays it quietly.
Every letter in a word starts together, each one a separate player tracing its own path. A five letter word is five players. Spread staggers their entries and Legato sets how smoothly each player joins one note to the next.
Each channel reads its glyphs one of two ways. Path plays the whole path of every glyph, and a word's letters run together as simultaneous lines. Tone plays one note per glyph, the average pitch of its whole path, so a melody can be spelled note by note. In Tone, glyphs typed together sound as a chord, each word lasts a beat, a comma holds it a beat longer, a dot rests a beat and the bar mark rests a bar.
Every piece is a book on the shelf, saved in this browser on this device a moment after every change, with no account. Back up saves the whole shelf to a file and Restore reads it back, which is how to move work to another device or keep it safe before clearing your browser.
The bottom row of keys shapes the rhythm. The wide key joins words with no gap. The comma rests a beat. The dot and the bar each rest a bar. Shift switches to the capital glyphs, which sound an octave higher.
Everything marked REC is a real player, recorded by the Philharmonia Orchestra. Each note plays a whole recording, picked for its length and loudness, and every instrument stays in its own range. Sounds marked SYN are synthesised in the browser.
Five pitches from one pentatonic set have no semitones between them, so any number of channels can play at once and stay consonant.