Simple Mode
A free beginner music maker for kids and classrooms. Draw notes on a 16×16 grid, pick a sound, a scale and effects, and share your song. No download.
Overview
- Simple mode
- A simplified, kid-friendly layout with only the essentials: draw notes, pick a sound and scale, and adjust a few effects. Open it from the Help menu, or pick Start simple on the card that greets you on your first visit. Your full project stays separate and unchanged while you use Simple mode.
- Who It Is For
- Simple mode is a beginner music maker for kids, classrooms and anyone making music for the first time. It is free and runs in the browser on computers, tablets and phones, with no download or signup.
- Switching modes
- You can also go to draw.audio/simple, or on a phone choose Simple mode in the header Menu. To go back to the full app, press Switch to Advanced mode, the last button in the toolbar.
Grid and Toolbar
- Drawing Notes
- The grid has 16 steps from left to right, and higher rows play higher notes. Click or tap a square to add a note, and click a note to remove it. Drag to draw or erase several squares in one stroke.
- Play and Tempo
- Press Play or Space to start and stop. The grid repeats until you stop it. Drag the tempo slider to set the speed in beats per minute (BPM); double-click it to go back to the default.
- Undo, Redo and Clear
- Undo and Redo step back and forward through your changes, including sound and effect changes. Clear asks Are you sure?; press it again to remove every note and reset the sound to Clean. The C key works the same way.
Sound, Scale and Effects
- Sound
- The Sound button opens a list of synth sounds, each with a picture. A new song starts on Clean. The list stays open after you pick, so you can try several sounds, even while the song plays. Each sound brings its own effect settings.
- Scale
- The Scale button sets which notes the grid rows play. Each scale has a mood word beside it: Major Pentatonic: Happy (the default) Minor Pentatonic: Dreamy Major: Bright Minor: Moody Blues: Bluesy Chromatic: Every note When you change the scale, notes stay on their rows and play that row's note in the new scale.
- Effects
- The Effects button opens six sliders. Double-click a slider to reset it. Reverb: adds the sound of a room around the notes. Delay: adds echoes in time with the tempo; higher values give more echoes. Slow, Medium and Fast space the echoes a quarter, an eighth or a sixteenth note apart. Swing: delays every second step for a shuffle feel. Note Length: the middle is the sound's natural length. Left makes notes shorter, right lets them ring longer. Glide: slides the pitch from one note to the next. Wobble: bends the pitch up and down by up to an octave; higher values wobble faster. At 0 it is off.
- Waveform Colors
- The rail beside the grid starts with five waveforms: Sine, Saw, Triangle, Square and Pulse. Pick one before you draw: new notes play with that waveform and take its color. Notes you already drew keep theirs, so one tune can mix several tones. Keys 1 to 5 pick them in that order.
- Play Direction
- Below the waveforms, five buttons set the order the steps play in: Forward, Backward, Bounce (back and forth), Columns (a random column each step) and Random (random notes from anywhere on the grid). Press D to cycle through them.
Settings
- Gear Button
- The gear button in the toolbar opens a short version of Song Settings: Piano Keys, Note Labels, Beat Lines and Octave Rows: turn these guides on the grid on or off. Theme: one of eight color themes. Visualizer: an animated background that moves with the sound. Pick Classic, Aurora, Kaleidoscope or Rings, turn it on or off, and set its Opacity. Language: the language of the app. Performance Mode: cuts animations and visual effects to save battery and CPU on slower devices. See Options & App.
Saving and Sharing
- My Songs
- Your song saves in this browser as you work. My Songs in the toolbar lists the songs made in Simple mode, so you can open an earlier one or start a new song. Songs made in Advanced mode are listed in Advanced mode only.
- Sharing
- The Share button makes a link to your song. A link made in Simple mode opens in Simple mode. The same window exports the song as a WAV file and saves a project file with Export project file. See Songs, Sharing & Explore for more.
- What Simple Mode Leaves Out
- Simple mode has one synth track on a 16×16 grid in 4/4 time. It has no control panel, mixer, drum tracks, chords, automation, note properties, Explore or Import project file. For those, switch to Advanced mode, which opens your Advanced project.