Filed under: Audio, Fun, Kids, Freeware, Time-Wasters, Web
Tonematrix makes music-making easy and fun - Time Waster
by Jason Clarke May 12th 2009 at 11:00AM
Tonematrix by AM Laboratory is a very fun and easy-to-use music sequencing toy. It's a 16 x 16 grid of grey boxes, and clicking in a box will turn it on. Boxes that have been turned on go white, and you will quickly see that each line of boxes has its own individual tone.
You can very quickly just click and drag all over the place to get a fast sense of how Tonematrix works, but the fun is in actually arranging your notes in a way that makes sense. Luckily, it's easy to make music that sounds good because rather than using a major or chromatic scale, Tonematrix uses a pentatonic scale. You may have noticed that if you play only the black keys on a piano, it's fairly easy to play something that sounds nice - that's because together the black keys make up a pentatonic scale.
What fun is making some music if you can't save it and come back to it? The makers of Tonematrix agreed, and built in the ability to copy and paste a series of comma-separated numbers representing each individual composition. For example, if you copy the following sequence of numbers and right-click on Tonematrix and choose "Paste", you will hear my first composition with Tonematrix:
36896,32772,33280,36868,32896,32772,33280,32788,16420,32768,33286,8192,32900,32768,16966,32768
Paste your favorite composition in the comments, and let's have some fun!
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
GP said 11:10AM on 5-12-2009
idk why you aren't linking audiotool
http://www.hobnox.com/audiotool
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jonathan said 3:22PM on 5-14-2009
12312,3840,96,118802,4738,162,100352,152,26176,0,66568,83176,16384,23564,16944,17280
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Jeffrey said 12:22PM on 5-12-2009
The black keys on the piano aren't a pentatonic scale. Pentatonic just means "five notes". The black keys are sharps and flats.
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Jason Clarke said 1:15PM on 5-12-2009
Yes, a pentatonic scale is any 5 note scale - which the black keys on the piano happen to be. The most common pentatonic scale is the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th notes of the major scale, which if you start on F# the black keys make up.
Ashish Bogawat said 1:04PM on 5-13-2009
16912,16904,17540,16386,36864,16392,24576,16656,34912,16400,24832,16392,36904,16408,16396,16394
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Tobidashi said 12:54PM on 5-12-2009
66560,64,16512,64,4128,576,1024,512,16640,33288,16452,10242,17444,2056,1060,512
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Dustin said 12:06PM on 5-12-2009
Fun.
2,1154,2304,32768,0,0,32768,1040,0,32768,0,0,2,6,4,61440
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Vincent said 3:06PM on 5-12-2009
Didn't realise we could copy/paste, but here what I came up with after a few minutes:
107016,16,67712,4,103680,16,160,86528,160,103440,128,73768,70660,64,103556,0
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sniping_dreamer said 11:02PM on 5-12-2009
This is ridiculously awesome. Now I have new ways to procrastinate!
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Timmy P. said 9:34PM on 5-12-2009
52280,34816,34872,104448,17866,69642,17418,70084,52234,34826,35274,104448,17464,69632,16384,65550
This is quite addiciting.
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unclejames9 said 11:29PM on 5-12-2009
Amazingly creative, i just love this one. I am gonna be on it for next many days.
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J5892 said 1:19AM on 5-13-2009
52280,34816,34872,104448,17866,69642,17418,70084,52234,34826,35274,104448,17464,69632,16384,65550
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Eric D. said 5:33PM on 5-13-2009
Someone NEEDS to make an app like this for the iPhone.
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Diddle said 6:01PM on 5-13-2009
They do, it's called ToneBoard.
Boogster said 12:49AM on 5-16-2009
What the? Believe it or not, StumbleUpon! dragged me there BEFORE this was posted! Looks like I was there first LOL
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Boogster said 12:57AM on 5-16-2009
40960,22554,660,98432,128,10266,274,71172,960,2120,99152,49252,71682,74304,44164,8
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Jordan said 3:36PM on 5-18-2009
37024,64,4224,0,37184,4224,8448,8192,49792,16704,8352,2128,32768,83976,32784,83968
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LoftLab said 4:54PM on 5-20-2009
If you like ToneMatrix, then you're going to love the free app TonePad on the iPhone/iPod touch!
http://tinyurl.com/tonepad
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