Frequently Asked Questions
- What is this? - We've turned the song Bohemian Rhapsody into a musical
instrument.
- How does it work? - We use the Echo Nest analyzer to break the song into
tiny segments that correspond to quasi-stable musical events. For each of these segments we
display a colored tiled. If you click on the tile we play that part of the song.
We color the tiles based on their timbral information. The tile widths are based upon the
underlying segment widths.
- Are there any other controls? - Yes. If you hold down the SHIFT key, you don't
need to click on a tile to play it. You can just mouse over it. If you hold down the CONTROL
key, when you mouse over a tile it will queue it up to be played after all the other tiles in
the queue have played. Pressing SPACE will cancel the play queue.
- What do the buttons do?
- Duration - Put the tiles in order of increasing duration
- Loudness - Put the tiles in order of increasing loudness
- Similar - Put the tiles in order of similarity to the last played tile
- Normal - Put the tiles in song order
- Reverse - Reverse the current order of the tiles
- Play - Play all the tiles in their current order
- Stop - Stops the music
- Can I play the instrument with the keyboard? yes. To assign a tile to a
particular key, just mouse over a tile, press shift and the key you want to assign to that
tile.
- How come this doesn't work in my browser? The app uses the brand new Web audio
API that as of 11/06/2011 is only supported in Chrome. Sometimes it will crash your browser so
be wary.
- Who made this? Father and daughter programming team of Paul and Jennie Lamere.