BeepBox

About

BeepBox is a music sketchpad that runs in your browser. You place notes on a grid, BeepBox plays them back right away, and within a few minutes you have a melody, a bass line and a drum pattern looping together. It is popular with game jam participants, hobby composers and anyone who wants to try making music without installing a DAW or learning music theory first. Its most charming idea is that the whole song lives in the URL. Every edit updates the address in your browser, so saving a song means bookmarking it and sharing it means pasting a link. Nothing is uploaded: BeepBox says its servers never receive, record or distribute songs, and it does not collect or track user data. It is a long-running passion project by John Nesky, who also publishes the synthesizer as an npm package so developers can play BeepBox songs in their own web games. A large community of fan-made modifications has grown around it. Highlights: • Click-to-place note grid with instant playback • Patterns arranged per channel, with a dedicated drum row • Chords, note bends and per-note volume by dragging • Adjustable loop region to rehearse one part of a song • Instrument settings for each channel, with built-in explanations for every option • Keyboard shortcuts for copy, paste, undo, redo and moving the selection • Songs saved and shared entirely through the URL, with no account • Open-source synthesizer library available for your own projects BeepBox is free to use and its creator promises it always will be; optional tips through PayPal are welcome. The source code is available under the MIT license. It works in any modern web browser on desktop and mobile, with no installation.

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