A fun new song maker takes songwriting back to it’s basics so anyone young and old, novice or experienced can make music in their browser.

Google just launched the latest app in their Chrome Music Lab experiments which are helping to make learning music accessible and fun. Song Maker is their newest hands-on experiment which takes music down to it’s basics with a drum line and a instrument line helping to teach the core of a rhythm and melody.

The in-browser app presents a simple template with a kick and snare line at the bottom and a 2 octave blank canvas above. It works on a 16 bar loop with 2 beats per bar so that users can simply input a drum line and some notes and see how they sound and refine it to how they want it to sound.

The 2 octave range allows you only to put in natural notes, so it’s a lot easier to sound “right”. But whilst you can’t make complex melodies with the 7 note scale you can still have some fun with chords. Once you’ve made a song you can share it straightaway with friends via a link.

You have the option to choose which drum sounds you want from an ‘Electronic’ drum machine sound, ‘Blocks’, a drum ‘Kit’ sound, and a ‘Conga’ sound. Likewise for the instrument you can choose between a ‘Marimba’, ‘Piano’, ‘Strings’, ‘Woodwind’, and ‘Synth’.

Google launched Song Maker as part of ‘Music In Our Schools Month‘, an initiative launched in 1985 to push learning music and getting creative to children in exciting new ways. You can play it in your web browser right now for free with no installs – just start playing. It even works on phones and tablets too.

Start making some music with Song Maker: musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Song-Maker