Make beats and songs in the Music studio

The Music studio makes music in your browser with Sonic Weaver's own instruments: a drum machine with synthesised kits, a synth with presets for bass, keys, pads and leads, and a mixer. Every sound is made by code as you play, nothing is generated by a model and nothing is uploaded, so the song you make is yours.

It works on a phone first: in portrait the play bar sits at the bottom in reach of a thumb, and a bar of drums shows eight steps at a time.

• Open the Music studio

• Sound on: browsers keep a page quiet until it is tapped, so the first tap starts the sound. On an iPhone the studio asks to play even with the silent switch on, where the phone allows it; if you still hear nothing, check the volume.
• Something playing: pick a starter by feel (Lo-fi, Hip-hop, Trap, House, Disco, Synthwave, Rock or Ambient). It loads a loop of drums, bass and chords in a key and a tempo, and it plays. A blank song is one tap away.
• Change the beat: tap steps on and off; you hear the change on the next pass of the loop. Undo is always on screen.
• Change a sound: a track's Kit or Sound menu holds its presets, heard as you choose them.
• Change the speed and the key in the top bar; a new key moves the bass and the chords with it.

Each row is a drum, named in plain words (kick, snare, clap, closed and open hat, and more from Add a row), and each square is a sixteenth note. Tap a step to turn it on or off. A lit step has a strength, soft, medium or strong, shown by its height and a number, never by colour alone: choose Tap: strength and a tap on a lit step changes it, or press 1, 2 or 3 with the step focused. A pattern is one, two or four bars long. Each row has M to mute it, S to solo it, and a More button with its own volume, Every 2nd step, Every 4th step and Clear.

The drums are written on the General MIDI drum numbers, so an exported MIDI file plays the right drums in any other music program.

Choose a melodic track (the bass, the chords or a synth you added) to open its notes in the piano roll: a keyboard down the left, time along the top, the song's scale lit. With Stay in key on, every note snaps to the scale, so it sounds right.

On a touch screen there are two modes: Draw, where a tap adds a note, a drag moves it and the handle past a selected note's end lengthens it, and Select, where you drag a box or tap notes and then move, copy or delete them with the buttons below the grid. Pinch to zoom. With a mouse, click to add, drag to move, drag the right edge to lengthen and drag across empty space to select. Chord opens the chords of the song's key: pick one, move it a beat earlier or later, and press Add chord. Tapping a key on the side plays its note.

Space plays or stops, Ctrl or Cmd + Z undoes and Shift + Ctrl or Cmd + Z redoes. In the piano roll the arrow keys move the selection a grid step or a note (with Stay in key on, the next note of the key), Shift with up or down moves it an octave, Delete removes it, and L loops the selection or the clip (L again plays the whole song); Keys in its top bar lists every shortcut. Turn on Play with keys to play notes from the letter keys, A to K from C to the next C, with Z and X for the octave; it is off by default, so typing a song's title never plays a note.

The studio keeps your song on this device as you work. Sign in and press Save to my library to keep the whole song (every track, its sound and its mix) in My library, where you open it again from any device.

Press Export WAV for the song rendered once, exactly as it plays, or Export MIDI for its notes, for any other music program. In Classic or Studio the Music studio is a tab beside your project: Use in project renders the WAV and makes it the project's song, ready for a visualizer, and My library opens a saved song in that tab.

• The Music studio's steps

Ask SW Agent to "make a 90 BPM lo-fi beat in A minor": it makes the beat as a WAV and offers Open in the Music studio, which opens the same beat (its tempo, key, chords and bass) as tracks you can change. "Open the music studio" opens it, and "make a trap beat at 140 BPM in the music studio" opens it on that starter.

• SW Agent