Make Music With Your Mouse

The best things in life are also often the simplest. That’s part of the reason we’ve been loving single-serving art websites from net artists like Miltos Manetas, Olia Lialina, Parker Ito and Rafaël Rozendaal. Cut out the feature bloat and keep it concise and refined, that’s the way into our overstimulated hearts.

Each site, which in the case of these artists exists as a standalone, unique art piece, is designed to offer a limited range of functions—a clean, understated, focused experience. And while most of the time these sites provide pretty straightforward interactions, they can also surprise and delight, throwing you for a loop and down an entirely different rabbit hole than you imagined.

Lately, we’ve spotted a bunch of musical single-serving sites that let you create elegant melodies in real-time. Like their art-oriented brethren, their charm lies in their simplicity, intuitiveness, and inviting approach to creating music. If nothing else, it’s a nice, relaxing way to kill some time and exercise your musical muscle a bit. Below is a selection of some of our favorites. Add your own in the comments!

Alexander Chen: MTA.me

Alexander Chen‘s MTA.me turns the NYC subway map into a string instrument. The piece begins in real time (slowly accelerating as the “day” goes by), and shows each departing train signified by the color of its corresponding subway line. When train paths intersect, they make a plucking sound, like a guitar or violin. You can also contribute to the music by clicking on and releasing a “string” with your mouse (bow and arrow style), or by simply holding down your mouse and running it all over the screen. MTA.me was built in HTML5/Javascript and pulls from the MTA’s API. Chen, who works at Google’s Creative Labs repurposed some of this code to create the Les Paul Google Doodle in celebration of the guitar legend’s 96th birthday. Read more about how this project was created, or check out Chen’s latest Bach-inspired piece here.

DinahMoe Labs: Plink

This Chrome experiment from DinahMoe Labs is a multi-player music experience you can play with friends or strangers. After you choose a username, you’re dropped into a digitized page of sheet music where you can select an instrument and move up and down the bar lines to compose a tune. Similar to the popular DJing site, Turntable.fm, you can even create a private room by typing in #roomName after the Plink URL and invite all your friends to jam out with you.

Angelo Plessas: EgoAllegro.com

This googly-eyed, chicken-beaked figure from one of our favorite net artists, Angelo Plessas, is stimulated when you move your mouse over the piano keys, releasing musical notes and eye-shaped targets, among other symbols, which seem to rain down from the sky. Pull on the tension-sensitive bars on each side of the checkered line or move the eyeballs up and down to prevent the structure from getting clogged. Once the symbols on the ground reach a certain level (or a certain amount of time passes), you’re brought to a new screen with musical Venus Flytraps and swirly lollypops. This is one situation when “the sky is falling” is a good thing.