How Google Turned the Browser Itself Into a Musical Instrument / CHROME MUSIC LAB "CHROME MUSIC LAB"

The problem

It started with "Music in Our Schools Month." Music education has always had barriers to entry—you need an instrument, you need to know theory. The idea was to knock those barriers down using web technology that anyone can use.

The insight

If you stop assuming people need to read notes or a musical staff, music becomes something you can jump into much faster. The thinking was: if you turn sound into colors, shapes, and blocks, people can feel how sound works even without knowing any theory. They even bring in Kandinsky's idea of the "sound of color"—right from the start, this project didn't seem too worried about drawing a line between education and play.

The idea

Using the Web Audio API, the team built 12 or 13 small experiments and put them all on one site: a "Voice Spinner" that records your voice and plays it backwards, a "Song Maker" where you tap a grid to compose music, and experiments that let you draw sound like a picture. Yotam Mann, a musician and coder, joined the project and built on his own library, Tone.js. The whole codebase was released as open source, so anyone could add new experiments of their own.

What happened

It launched in March 2016 at g.co/musiclab and was even featured on Google's homepage, drawing huge traffic. That same year, it won several awards at Cannes Lions, including a Gold Lion in the Digital Craft category.

Afterthought

It doesn't even call itself an "ad," yet by genuinely trying to open a door into music, it ended up winning awards anyway. The most impressive part is that teachers are apparently still pulling it up in classrooms today. Something made for promotion that keeps getting actually used, year after year—that's real strength.

Awards

• Cannes Lions Gold 2016

Tags