Browser-Based Digital Synthesizer
A synthesizer builds sound from scratch: an oscillator produces a raw tone, a filter shapes its brightness and an envelope shapes its loudness over time. This one lets you hear and see each of those steps.
What Can the Web Synthesizer Do?
- Six starting sounds: lead, pad, bass, pluck, organ and retro square. Pick one and change it as you like.
- Oscillators and filter: four waveforms, a detune control that plays two oscillators slightly apart for a fuller tone, and a low-pass filter with cutoff and resonance.
- ADSR envelope: attack, decay, sustain and release decide how each note begins, holds and fades.
- Live waveform display: watch the shape of the sound change as you move the controls.
- Recorder and note history: record your playing as a WAV file, and save the notes as a MIDI file to open in any music software.
How to Play
The bottom row of letters on your keyboard, from Z to M, plays the lower octave, with S, D, G, H and J as the black keys. The row from Q to U plays the upper octave, with 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 as the black keys, and I is the top C. The keys follow their position on the keyboard, so the pattern is the same on any layout; the letters printed on the piano show a standard QWERTY keyboard, and where the browser allows it they change to match yours. You can also click or touch the piano, slide from key to key, and play chords. The octave buttons move the whole keyboard up or down by up to two octaves.
Who Is It For?
Anyone learning how synthesizers work, music students practicing scales and chords, and producers who want to sketch a melody on a laptop and carry it into their studio software as MIDI. What the waveforms are and why they sound different is explained in Sine, Square, Sawtooth: Synthesizer Waveforms Explained; to look up the pitch of a note, use the Frequency to Note Converter.