Paint walls, then throw or launch balls.Turn your phone sideways for a bigger stage.
Launcher
The dashed line is its path. Drag the round handle on the board to aim (Shift snaps to 15°). It holds fire while you aim.
Zone
Changes the notes of walls inside the box (Time changes the balls inside it). Drag an edge or corner to resize, the middle to move. Overlapping zones add up. New zones copy these settings.
Bouncy Tones
Draw a stage on the grid, then launch balls into it. Every time a ball hits a wall it plays a note, and the wall's material and the way the ball hits it decide what you hear.
Paint walls with a material (keys 1–9). Right-drag erases. Hold Shift for a straight line.
Throw (F): drag in the direction you want the ball to go. A longer drag throws harder. Click to drop one.
Launcher (L): place it and drag to aim. It fires a ball on the beat. Click any launcher to see its path and adjust it.
Sink (K) swallows balls. Pad (P) is a background tile that holds a note while a ball is inside it. Space plays or pauses.
Zone (Z): drag a box to change the notes inside it (octave, volume, echo, muffle). Solo (S): drag a box to hear only the walls inside it for a while.
How notes are made
A ball plays a note every time it hits a wall. Five things shape the note:
Material picks the instrument, its octave range and how bouncy the wall is. Stone is silent. Felt soaks up bounce. Bumper kicks the ball away faster than it arrived. Crystal loses no energy at all, so a ball bouncing between crystal walls keeps exact time forever.
Where the cell sits picks the pitch: the faint letter in each square is its note. It comes from Key, Scale and Pitch (rows, columns or diagonal). The note always stays inside the instrument's range: a note above it wraps round to the bottom of the range, a note below it moves up by octaves.
Impact speed (the part of the ball's speed going into the wall) sets loudness and brightness. Below 0.9 squares per second the hit is too soft to sound, so resting and rolling balls stay quiet.
Impact angle: a head-on hit rings out long and full. A glancing hit is short and quiet.
Corner hits on a wall's outside corner add a fifth above the note.
Balls
Balls pass through each other, so a pattern repeats the same way each time it plays.
A ball fades when it runs out of Life (counted in beats, so it follows the tempo), or once it has sat still for 1.5 s. Sinks swallow balls. Max caps how many are in play: past it, the oldest fades out.
Launchers fire every ¼ to 8 beats, or once (only when the beat restarts, on Play from a reset or ⟲ Reset). Click a launcher to see its path and change its direction, speed, interval and offset. Painting goes round launchers; only the eraser removes them.
Snap delays each note to the next beat subdivision so everything lands in rhythm. Identical notes in the same slot merge into one. Turn it off for free timing. Sub adds a finer grid next to each Snap line: with Snap 1/16 and Sub 1/64 after, a hit up to 1/64 note after a 1/16 line plays exactly 1/64 after it instead of waiting for the next 1/16 (before does the same for hits just before a line; it delays all sound by 1/64 so those notes can move earlier).
A ball takes on the colour of the last wall it hit.
Pads are background tiles, not walls: balls fly through them, and a pad holds a soft sustained note (pitch from its square, like walls) for as long as any ball is inside. It starts and stops on the Snap grid. Zones change pads too (octave, volume, harmony makes a chord, pan, muffle).
Every note is panned by where the hit is on the stage: walls on the left sound from the left, walls on the right from the right. Pan zones make that stronger or weaker.
A launcher can be muted or soloed in its panel. Its balls still bounce; they just don't play. While any launcher is soloed, only soloed launchers play (thrown balls go quiet too).
Zones and solo
Zone (Z): drag a box over some walls. Notes from walls inside it get its effects: Octave shift (this can go past the instrument's usual range), Volume (including mute), Echo (3 repeats on the beat grid), Muffle, Harmony (adds a 3rd, 5th, triad, 7th chord or octave, always from the current scale), Plays (only every 2nd/3rd/4th/8th note in the zone sounds; the count restarts on ⟲ Reset) and Pan (how strongly the hit's left/right position on the stage pans the note). Reset effects makes the zone do nothing. Time is different: balls inside the zone move slower or faster, along the same path. Click a zone with the Zone tool to edit or delete it; drag its edges or corners to resize it, or its middle to move it. Overlapping zones add up. Zones are part of the stage, so they save and go into share links.
Solo (S): drag a box and only walls inside it play. Balls still bounce everywhere, so timing doesn't change. It's temporary: click with the Solo tool, press Esc or click the yellow chip to clear it. It isn't saved.
Keys
1–9 materials · F throw · L launcher · K sink · P pad · E eraser · Z zone · S solo · Del delete selected zone · Space play/pause · R reset · Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z undo/redo · Esc cancel a drag · H this help
The stage saves itself in this browser. Share link copies a link to the stage and its settings.