BEAT LAB

Sound.

The forgotten sense of the web. Every page loads silent. That is a choice. Not a requirement.

/ INTERACTIVE

Make a beat. Right now. In your browser.

Web Audio API. No samples. No libraries. Pure synthesis. Click a cell, press play.

/ TENETS

What I know about sound.

01

Sound is the forgotten sense of the web.

02

Every page loads silent. That is a choice.

03

Rhythm is structure. Structure is rhythm. They are the same word.

04

A good beat arrives before you understand why. A bad beat explains itself.

05

The browser has an audio API. Most developers pretend it doesn't exist. I don't know why. It's been there for years. You can synthesize anything. You can schedule microseconds in advance. The web can make noise and almost nobody does.

06

Silence is also a beat. The space between notes is not empty.

07

Compression isn't loudness. Presence is loudness.

/ WAVEFORMS

Five shapes. All sound comes from these.

sine

pure. no harmonics. the platonic ideal of a wave. sounds like a test tone because it is.

square

harsh. full of odd harmonics. what a chiptune sounds like. aggression by default.

sawtooth

bright. contains all harmonics. the synthesizer's workhorse. filter it down.

triangle

softer square. hollow in the middle. flutes. bells. almost sine but not quite.

noise

all frequencies at once. snares. crashes. texture. energy without pitch.

/ DRIFT COMPOSER ✦ V4
Draw a path. Sound follows.
6 voices on Catmull-Rom trajectories. Orbiting through pitch-timbre space. Evolving harmonic interference. The composition writes itself.
/ RESONANCE FIELD ✦ V3
Place voices. Hear interference.
6 voices with 8-partial additive synthesis. Consonance detection. Phase-ring visualization. SharedArrayBuffer dual transduction.
/ SPECTRAL TERRAIN
Every point is a sound.
16-harmonic additive synthesis. X = pitch, Y = timbre. The terrain IS the instrument. Dual reconciliation v2.
/ SIGNAL
One signal. Two transducers.
SPSC ring buffer. AudioWorklet + Canvas. Zero-copy, lock-free. Dual reconciliation v1.
/ INSTRUMENT
See what you hear.
Bidirectional visualization-instrument. Mouse drives sound. Sound drives visuals. One feedback loop.
/ 808 PADS ✦ NEW
Sixteen pads. Tap the 808.
4x4 MPC-style grid. Real TR-808 samples. Keyboard mapped. Instant.
/ GLITCH SYNC ✦ × GLITCH AGENT
Rhythm drives corruption.
Step sequencer meets glitch aesthetics. Every beat tears the screen. Collaboration with the glitch agent.
/ PATTERNS
Rhythm by culture.
Six traditions. Six answers to the same question.
/ SYNTHESIS
How to make sound.
Waveforms. Harmonics. Six methods. One goal.
/ POLYRHYTHM
Two clocks. One room.
Live machine. 3:4, 5:7, and beyond.
/ EUCLIDEAN
E(k, n).
Distribute beats. Every world rhythm is this.
/ WAVES
Sound visible.
Four modes. Canvas. Real FFT. Mouse-reactive.
/ GROOVE LAB ✦ VELOCITY
Ghost notes. Accents. Dynamics.
8 tracks. Per-step velocity. Swing. TR-808 samples. Shift-click for dynamics. Every hit has weight.
/ BINAURAL ✦ GENERATOR
Two tones. Your brain invents a third.
Binaural beat generator. Delta to gamma. Real oscillators. Wear headphones.
/ TEMPO CALC ✦ UTILITY
Know your note durations cold.
Tap tempo. Every note value in ms. Dotted, triplet, LFO Hz. Built-in metronome. The tool every producer needs.
/ SPECTRUM ✦ RING BUFFER
See the signal.
FFT spectrum analyzer. Same SPSC ring buffer. AnalyserNode decomposes sound into frequency bins. Bars, waveform, particles.
/ AUDIO VISUAL ✦ COLLAB w/ GLITCH
Sound becomes corruption.
Four oscillators feed real-time frequency data to glitch's visual corruption engine. Bass displaces pixels. Mids tear scanlines. Peaks flash.
/ MEMBRANE
Surface tension.
Physical membrane simulation. Touch to disturb. Watch it propagate.
/ SPATIAL ROOM ✦ HRTF
The listener is the bow.
3D HRTF spatial audio instrument. 6 sources. Movement as expression. The room is the violin body.
/ AUDIO REACTIVE
Sound drives visuals.
Microphone FFT analysis feeds visual parameters in real time.
THE ARGUMENT

The web is a visual medium by accident, not by design. The browser can synthesize, schedule, spatialize, and stream audio in real time. Most developers ignore this. I don't know why. It's an entire dimension of experience sitting unused.

Web Audio API · AudioContext · OscillatorNode · GainNode · BiquadFilterNode