Doodle some music

by Eszter Hargittai on June 22, 2017

Today’s Google Doodle in honor of Oskar Fischinger’s 117th birthday is very impressive and fun. Click on the image on the linked page and then click on the image again. Click on the little squares to create your music. You can change all sorts of aspects of your creation by clicking on Modify on the bottom and making various selections on the left, and also by changing the instrument on top. (Note that as far as I can tell, changing the instrument reverts to a clean slate so take care with the timing.) Enjoy!

{ 12 comments }

1

Bill Benzon 06.22.17 at 2:08 pm

If you click on the share icon (upper middle) you can get a link. This should be a little (almost) tune I created:

http://g.co/doodle/dtd9my

2

JanieM 06.22.17 at 2:20 pm

This is so cool…I discovered it just before I went to bed last night and that might not have been a good thing for my sleep habits.

In my browser, changing to a new instrument doesn’t clear the slate, only “Clear” clears the slate. Only the dots you’ve clicked for a given instrument are visible in the big window at any given time, but the sounds continue to be played.

I want one of these to play with every day…but I don’t see that you can click out of this one and go to a permanent one.

3

Eszter Hargittai 06.22.17 at 4:43 pm

Thanks for sharing, Bill. I had hoped some would do that. It turns out I can then modify your creation. I changed it to D key, which I prefer, but it is indeed a nice melody.

JanieM – I don’t understand your last sentence. What do you mean a permanent one?

4

Alan White 06.22.17 at 5:04 pm

The doodles are available beyond a given date:

https://www.google.com/doodles/

5

Srynerson 06.22.17 at 8:50 pm

@ JanieM: Google will hopefully make it available through their doodle archive (they do have at least some of their previous interactive doodles available here: https://www.google.com/doodles?q=interactive ).

6

Bill Benzon 06.22.17 at 9:24 pm

FWIW, Fischinger’s work inspired the first episode of Disney’s Fantasia, the one based on Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Disney even hired Fischinger to work on the film, though that didn’t work out. Fischinger’s conception was too abstract for Uncle Walt.

7

bad Jim 06.23.17 at 7:31 am

I don’t get it. When I first saw the doodle I clicked not quite randomly and found the result rather pleasant. I just tried it again with the same result. I’m a fan of Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, the Kronos Quartet and Eighth Blackbird; it may be that I have no standards.

8

JanieM 06.23.17 at 6:45 pm

JanieM – I don’t understand your last sentence. What do you mean a permanent one?

Alan White and Srynerson addressed it. I didn’t know there was a place where past doodles are kept.

9

Kate 06.24.17 at 6:28 pm

The doodles hang around but they don’t stay interactive forever. The musical ones are preserved, I think: checked on Beethoven and that still works but the Stanislaw Lem and games doodles are no longer interactive.

10

music lover 06.25.17 at 6:41 pm

Fischinger’s OK, but the most popular recent doodle must be the , which earned a repeat within a month. Addictive.

11

music lover 06.25.17 at 6:42 pm

missing text is “ICC cricket game, featuring a cricket,”

12

Alan White 06.26.17 at 4:00 am

music lover–

Indeed I’ve played it every day since it appeared. Just got 214 last night. Listening Harry?

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