8bit BGM maker

■ What this is

A tool for making background music for games and videos.

The sound is 8-bit: square and triangle waves, nothing else. Each track runs about 1 minute

30 seconds. There are 29 places to choose from.

You do not need to know any music theory. You do not need to read sheet music.

Pick a place, and if it is not quite right, nudge a slider. That is enough to get a track.

I built this because I am one of the people who opened a full-featured music program,

looked at it, and decided it was beyond me.

So the first thing you see here is nothing but a row of buttons.

■ How to use it (4 steps)

  1. Pick a place       Press one of the 29 presets and it starts playing straight away

  2. Shape the music    Tempo, brightness, note density and so on, across seven sliders (optional)

  3. Edit the notes     Fix only the notes that bother you, in the piano roll (optional)

  4. Export             Save it as a WAV file

You can try the browser version right here on this page.

If you plan to use it properly, take the downloadable version. It is the same tool.

■ The 29 places included

  CALM      Farmland / Lake / Lone Island / Frozen Sea / Deep Sea / Ruined City / Cave / Graveyard

  MIDDLE    Coast / Port Town / Forest / Sunken Forest / Limestone Cave / Wasteland / Ancient Ruins / Ruins Depths

  INTENSE   Castle Town / Highroad / Highlands / Summit / Ravine / Mountain Pass /Sea of Trees / Volcano

  BATTLE    Battle 1 / Battle 2 / Battle 3 / Battle 4 / Battle 5

They run from quiet to intense. Take whichever one fits.

You can also ignore the presets and write something from scratch.

Press "Start blank" to clear the roll, then build it yourself.

■ Rights to what you make

  - Free for commercial and non-commercial use

  - No credit required

  - Games, videos, streams, apps: any use is fine

Every track is produced by calculation.

No existing music was learned from, sampled, or used as material.

So you never have to stop and wonder whether a track is safe to ship.

That is the main reason this tool exists.

■ About AI

No AI is involved in generating the music.

The tool itself, however, was built with AI assistance. Saying so up front.

■ It does not talk to the internet

Everything runs inside your browser. Nothing is ever sent to a server.

What you make never leaves your machine, and nothing you do is logged.

The downloadable version works with no internet connection at all.

■ The same settings always give you the same song

"I want that track I had a minute ago" is possible here.

There is no randomness. Given the same settings, you get the same melody every time.

Save the song data (.txt) and you can return to exactly where you left off,

hand-edited notes included.

■ What people use it for

  - Placeholder or final music for an indie game

  - Background music for videos and let's plays

  - Game jams, or anything else on a deadline

  - Those moments when writing one track yourself is faster than searching an asset library

■ English / 中文 / 日本語

Switch languages in the top-right corner.

■ What it cannot do (honestly)

  - 8-bit sound only. No orchestra, no band

  - Mono, not stereo

  - The drum part cannot be edited (it is display only)

  - Notes move up and down, not left and right

This is not a do-everything music program.

It does a small number of things, so that you never have to stop and work out what to do next.

■ Pricing

Everything works for free. There are no restrictions.

If you like it and feel like supporting the work, a contribution would mean a great deal to me.