A new sequencer tool was added to Chrome Music Lab, adding more functionality to a browser-based experiment that lets anyone create music.
Chrome Music Lab launched back in 2016 as one of the Google Creative Lab’s experimental projects. It represents an effort to bring music tools to a wider audience for free, and they allow users to interact with producing music in an approachable way. While many people may be able to write down a tune or record some basic music, the actual process of music production is quite involved and can be scary to newcomers. Chrome Music Lab breaks everything down in an easy-to-understand format, and while it doesn’t have the same breadth of features that we’d see in a more fully-featured music production program, it’s certainly enough to allow people to experiment with making their own music.
The new tool added to Chrome Music Lab is a sequencer, which will allow users to add loops for two different instruments and to save it or send it to somebody. A piano roll and grid allows users to fill in the different note “blocks,” which makes it easy to program the Chrome Music Lab to produce the sounds you’re looking for. There are a wide variety of instruments available for this feature, ranging from the Marimba to Electronic to Strings and more. Once the notes are placed on the roll, you can then adjust the tempo to suit your needs.
While you likely won’t become a hotshot music producer with Chrome Music Lab, the functionality of the program is actually pretty impressive. You won’t be making professional-grade tracks on the utility, but as an introduction to the world of music production, it’s actually a pretty good primer. Tools that are included in the Chrome Music Lab include Oscillators, Sound Waves, Arpeggios, a Spectrogram and several different utilities that combine to make a music-making suite.
The addition of the sequencer also brings along with it some customization tools, allowing users to control settings such as octave range, beats per bar, loop length and several different settings. As mentioned above, the utility is lacking in some major features that professional producers would need, but Chrome Music Lab is free and a good opportunity for enthusiasts to get their feet wet and decide whether this is a hobby (or career) they’d like to commit to moving forward.
Chrome Music Lab is just one project from the prolific Google Creative Lab. The program is an opportunity for bright minds around the world to be paid for their work creating groundbreaking creative projects across a wide variety of industries. The team runs a one year, paid internship in which the best of the best offer something the world has never seen before, and creations like the Chrome Music Lab introduce accessible and brand new ideas that leverage the creativity of this top-notch team.
Moving forward, we expect the Google Chrome Music Lab to be further expanded with additional features that make making music in your browser even easier. With more features and functionality continued to be added, it might not be too long before we have a more comprehensive way to bring imagined music to life. The lab will likely never be as fully-featured as industry-standard software, but as a free utility, it definitely provides a creative outlet to anyone who wants to create music.
In order to take a look at the work the Google Creative Lab continues to contribute towards Chrome Music Lab, you can access the website on a desktop, mobile phone, tablet and other internet-connected devices to start laying down some tunes.
