Llamabox

How to play

1. Tap a square on the paper to punch a hole, and tap a hole to fill it back in. Each row is one note, low at the bottom and high at the top, with the note names on the comb at the left. With a mouse, drag to punch several holes at once.
2. Press Play and the paper feeds into the comb, playing each hole as it arrives. Or turn the crank yourself: drag around it clockwise, fast or slow. Like a real music box, the song plays round and round until you stop it.
3. The bar under the paper is a map of your whole song. Drag along it, or tap anywhere on it, to jump to that part. Play starts from wherever the paper is.
4. Set the tempo, the time signature (3 beats to a bar for waltzes and lullabies, 4 for most songs), and the length of the paper. Made a mistake? Undo takes back your last change, even clearing the whole paper.
5. Try a song to hear what the music box can do, then change it into your own. Llamabox remembers your song next time you visit.
6. Press Share song to get a link with your whole song inside it. Anyone who opens the link hears exactly what you made, with no account or sign-up.
7. On a computer keyboard, Space plays and stops, and Ctrl + Z (⌘ + Z on a Mac) undoes.

About the music box

The music box was invented in Switzerland in the late 1700s. Inside, a comb of tuned steel teeth is plucked by pins on a turning cylinder. Later music boxes read their songs from a strip of punched paper instead, so anyone could make their own tunes with a hole punch.

Llamabox has a 25-note comb covering two full octaves, from middle C up to high C, with every sharp and flat, so almost any melody fits. The sound is generated live in your browser, with no recordings. Lofi and Dream were written for Llamabox, and Gymnopédie No. 1 is arranged from public-domain music.

History of the music box →