Having a lazy Sunday? Love music? A group of friends spent the last few year’s worth of Sundays creating the perfect weekend-activity for you. BlokDust is a visual music-making map that runs in your browser and let’s you build your own synthesizer out of tiny musical blocks.
Luke Phillips, one of BlokDust’s creators, posted it to Reddit earlier this week. It has received hundreds of positive comments and spawned a new subreddit for users to share their creations. Among them is a fuzzy, chip-tune rendition of Ah Ha’s “Take On Me.” (Click the block next to the arrow to begin playing it.) Also, this mesmerizing original composition.
The utterly delightful, slickly-designed app allows you to create music by wiring together a variety of different components, sort of like musical Legos. Some blocks establish a tone. Other blocks turn them on and off—just once or in cycles. Still others allow you to modulate or distort the output. There is even a microphone block so with a little effort you could totally turn yourself into Darth Vader.
The learning curve for the app can be a bit steep, but if you stick with it you’ll be making music in no time. If you make something great, why not tweet your creation to @qz.