Grotrian Pianos
Kind of along the same lines as my post about Picnik yesterday, but still different. Check out Grotrian Pianos if you are into making noise and watching little colored squares dance around. I can’t quite seem to put my finger on much of a practical use for this site (as far as I can tell you can’t record sound bites or anything) and also it is a little weird because everything is written in German, but still I had a blast playing with it yesterday. I love the physical nature of Grotrian Pianos, the way the little colored squares move about, crash into each other, change directions, and exchange velocities. It has been a long time since I took physics in high school but to me it appears that there are some actual physical laws being used here (like gravity and exchange of energy). Then you have the noise that is created. While I was playing around I really could only figure out how to make a cacophony of random notes but I bet if somebody is really patient they could figure out how to make some good sounding music. I think if I was going to really attempt to make a piece that sounded good I’d open Grotrian Pianos in several tabs or windows and then set each one up to play different parts, toggling the “pause” switch on them to bring parts in and out. Anyhow, check it out, in the very least it might give you some entertainment for a few minutes.
