How to draw music: a one-minute experiment

Make three marks, not a masterpiece

Start a new drawing. Pick Soft keys and draw a short line near the bottom left. Add another a little higher in the middle, then a third near the upper right. Press Play. You have made an ascending phrase by changing both pitch and timing.

Our engine reads 32 time steps across an eight-beat loop. Notes snap to a 15-position range built from the selected scale. A freehand line becomes a series of notes, not a continuous pitch bend.

Change only one thing

Use Select to move the middle mark down. It will still happen at roughly the same time, but sound lower. Move it left instead and it will arrive earlier. Change its sound to Bells to hear another voice without changing its pitch.

Make space

Try leaving the final quarter of the drawing empty. Silence gives the phrase somewhere to breathe. Then add a low purple line under one of your marks. Notes in the same column can overlap; too many overlapping lines can feel crowded.

The engine limits simultaneous notes per step to keep detailed projects manageable. For a clearer result, erase a few marks or mute one sound before adding more.

Keep the version you like

Undo and Redo let you compare recent edits. The history is session-only and limited to 40 steps. Save an editable project when you reach a version you want to keep; a rendered WAV is for listening, not reopening the drawing.

Try Stepping stones or find another starting point.