Make
Music Makers
Browser instruments, sequencers and sound toys designed so that anyone's first thirty seconds sound good. Headphones strongly recommended.
14 sites
Chiptune tracker with a whole song's worth of channels, shareable as a URL that contains the entire tune inside it.
- 10 min
- Sound on
- Desktop
Drag four blobs up and down and they sing genuine four-part harmony, trained on real opera singers, always in key.
- <1 min
- Sound on
The cat plays whatever key you press, on bongos, a keyboard or a full drum kit. Peak internet, and still maintained.
- <1 min
- Sound on
Fourteen small experiments — spectrogram, harmonics, arpeggios — that explain how music works by letting you break it.
- 10 min
- Sound on
Dress beatboxers in different outfits and each one adds a loop, building a full a cappella track by drag and drop.
- 10 min
- Sound on
Faithful browser rebuild of the Roland TR-808, down to the orange buttons and the cowbell nobody can leave alone.
- 10 min
- Sound on
- Desktop
Ableton's free course on beats, basslines and song structure, taught by handing you the instruments inside the page.
- 10 min
- Sound on
- Desktop
Multi-instrument piano roll in a browser, backed by thousands of user sequences you can open, pull apart and ruin.
- 10 min
- Sound on
- Desktop
Every letter on the keyboard fires a sound and a matching shape, and mashing the whole row is the correct way to use it.
- <1 min
- Sound on
- Desktop
One piano, several people, one link — everybody's keys light up in a different colour and it descends into noise fast.
- 2 min
- Sound on
- Desktop
Grid sequencer with a marimba and a drum kit, tuned so that anything you tap sounds passable, then shared as a link.
- 2 min
- Sound on
Tap any key in rhythm and it plays the next chunk of Clair de Lune, so timing is the only skill actually required.
- 2 min
- Sound on
Same idea as typing but with notes rather than drums — write a paragraph, receive a surprisingly pretty melody.
- <1 min
- Sound on
- Desktop
Type words and each letter becomes a drum hit, so your own name comes out as a loop you will struggle to stop playing.
- <1 min
- Sound on
- Desktop
How we picked these
Every entry in Detour is hand-sorted rather than scraped: filed under one category, given one to three moods, and placed in a time band for how quickly it pays off. The practical facts — cost, sign-up, sound, device and whether it is safe at a desk — are recorded per site and shown on every card, so you can rule things out before you click.
Music Makers: questions
How many sites are in Music Makers?
14 sites, each hand-sorted by category, mood and how long it takes to pay off.
Which of these sites are free with no sign-up?
14 of the 14 are free and need no account. None of them are paid.
Do these sites work on a phone, and are they safe for work?
6 of 14 work on a phone; the rest are desktop only. 14 are safe for work and 0 work with the sound off.