Hello again,

I hope your week is going well and the sun is shining (if you like that sort of thing).

I thought I might provide you with a resource to help explore music. Chrome Music Lab is a fun interactive website. It has several engaging music activities which may be perfect for music exploration and creation at home or in the classroom. In this post I will focus on the Shared Piano function of Chrome Music Lab.

If you click on the Shared Piano you will find a virtual keyboard which you can control to make music by clicking with your mouse/touch pad, or connecting a Midi instrument. The piano keyboard is pitch correct and accurate, as well as customisable with a (limited) library of sounds. You can change from a piano to a string section, or a marimba. Each note you play will also produce a ribbon of colour long or short, correlating to the lenght of time the key is pressed and pitch played. This helps visualise note duration and pitch relationships. Probably the coolest part of shared piano is that you can share the piano with someone else on another computer. The site provides a link to “your piano” which you can share with a friend, teacher, or student. This enables you to play and learn together, bring a community focus in online music education, which is not always present.