Tony! Toni! Tone!

Phase Toy is a charming and relaxing little music toy. Click on a cell to have the sequencer play its corresponding tone, which is somewhat remeniscent of those toy rainbow-colored xylophones we all played with when we were kids. Click as few or as many cells as you like. Unlike randomly hitting keys at say, a piano, you really can't make a jarring offkey sound.

Clicking the plus (+) and minus (-) buttons changes the number of tones that get played before repeating, which has the effect of making various musical patterns come into and out of phase, hence the name. This find came via Jay is Games, and I would encourage you to check out the comments there. Some of the readers shared their own compositions that you may just want to try out. Feel free to share any masterpieces you create with the rest of us. The notation that seems to work best is like this (for the random little ditty above, for example):

Bar 1 - 2534
Bar 2 - 104201045
Bar 3 - 160310400435
where 1 through 6 correspond to low through high tones and 0 means no tone selected.


And speaking of tones, here are a few more for your listening pleasure:

Tones on Tail - Go! - Tones on Tail was a side project for a couple of members of Bauhaus. The band really became a going concern when Bauhaus fell apart in 1983. Allmusic Guide provides a good analysis of the song.

"Go!" became a massive hit in New York clubs and elsewhere, its giddy main shout sampled by Moby for his own breakthrough single of that name, covered by Brainiac, and more. The song itself deserves all the attention it got, kicking off with one of the peppiest distortion bass lines ever recorded. Brisk handclaps and a quirky percussion loop lead into Daniel Ash's merrily gooned-up chant of "Ya ya ya ya ya ya!," and while occasional sudden halts let the title word sneak in around the side, there's not much more to it.

Rustic Overtones - Feast or Famine - This cut comes from the Portland, ME seven-piece outfit's 1998 debut effort Rooms by the Hour.

The Spongetones - She Goes Out With Everybody - Channeling early Beatles and The Dave Clark Five, The Spongetones produced some fine early 80s powerpop.

Technorati tags: music, toy, creativity, mp3Tones on TailRustic OvertonesSpongetones