NodaLab
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Free alpha · the demo needs no account

Learn, practise and compose, on theory you can take apart.

Instrument courses, ear and reading exercises, pieces and backing tracks: every page of NodaLab is a graph of scales, chords, rhythms and instruments. It plays as you change it, on a fretboard, a keyboard, a score or a tab.

Hear a jig made of nodes Start the guitar course Try the demo

This is an alpha: it works, it is rough in places, and what you tell us decides what comes next. To save your own projects, create an account or sign in.

A graph as the editor draws it: a scale feeds every chord it can build, one is kept and shown on a fretboard; the chords and a rhythm feed a backing track, read as tablature. C major Scale Every chord of C scale → chords Keep one Select On the neck Strings Eighth notes Rhythm Strum them Backing track Read it Tablature C major C · major Keep one C Dm Em F G Am Eighth notes On the neck Read it 3 0 0 0 2 3 3 0 0 0 2 3 3 0 0 0 2 3 3 0 0 0 2 3 3 0 0 0 2 3
Three ways in

Start from where you are.

NodaLab ships ten collections of pages, read one after the other: five courses and the tool's own five.

Learn an instrument

Guitar and piano for beginners, from the first note to a whole song, and a first look at the bass, the ukulele and the kalimba. Every lesson plays, and lights on a neck, a keyboard or a score what to play next.

Open the first guitar lesson

Practise every day

Routines and exercises: intervals, chords and scales by ear, reading off a staff or a tab, the twelve keys. Answer on screen, on a MIDI keyboard or on your computer's keys, then loop it, count it in and raise the tempo.

Try the daily ear training

Compose step by step

Nine pieces, from baroque to hyperpop, built before your eyes; six backing tracks to improvise over; generators writing phases, canons and a fugue. Each one is yours to rewire.

Play over a lo-fi backing track
Under every page

A graph you can open, and rewire.

1

Pick a node

The palette holds scales, chords, rhythms, instruments and players: about 150 building blocks, each with its own documentation.

2

Wire the ports

Every port has a type, and every type has a colour. A connection that cannot work is refused before it is made.

3

Press play

Chords arpeggiate, scales run, rhythms loop, and the notation follows the sound note by note.

One graph, two views

Build it as a graph. Use it as a page.

The editor

A zoomable canvas of draggable nodes and typed connections. This is where an idea gets taken apart and rewired.

The page

The same graph laid out as interactive widgets: selectors, fretboards, scores and a transport bar. What you actually play with, no wires in sight.

What's inside

Write it, hear it, mix it, take it elsewhere.

Theory as building blocks

Notes, intervals, scales, keys, chords, voicings, cadences and progressions, and scales and chords of your own. Harmonize a melody, reharmonize a chart, set two voices against each other.

Write and read it your way

A piano roll, a score editor and a tab editor, recording from a MIDI controller or your computer's keyboard. Every staff, tab, neck and keyboard lights what is sounding.

Hear it, mix it

Every General MIDI instrument across three sample libraries, a drum machine, backing tracks from your chords, and a console: level, EQ, compressor, distortion, delay, reverb and pan per track.

Play over the real thing

Lay a recording or a YouTube video on the bars by tapping along, and the tab, the chords and the scale follow it, slowed down if you need.

Files in, files out

Import MIDI and MusicXML; export MIDI, MusicXML, Ogg or WAV. A file NodaLab wrote comes back whole, its mix and its tabs included.

Nodes of your own

Fold part of a graph into a module: one node to place again, share, or apply to every element of a list.

Together

For a class, a band, or anyone who listens.

A class

Make a group, invite your students by a link, and share a project or a whole collection with chapters: what you add later reaches them too.

A band

Talk a song over in the group's conversation or beside its canvas, pin what matters, and keep its projects, recordings, scores and pictures in one place.

An audience

A page of your own, followers, private messages, a forum, and a catalogue where your public collections are found, followed and rated.

Accounts

One account for you. Guest accounts for the people you play with.

Two kinds of accounts, and both get the whole editor.

Your account

The account you open yourself on the sign-up page, free during the alpha.

  • Your projects and collections, saved and shared.
  • Groups you own, for a class or a band.
  • Invitation links for their members, who open a guest account on them.
  • Libraries of your own: MIDI files and scores, recordings, videos, pictures, and the scales and chords you define.

Guest

Opened from your invitation link, for the people you work with.

  • The whole editor, and their own saved projects.
  • Everything shared in the groups they belong to.
  • Nothing to fill in but their details, no plan of their own.

Ready to hear what theory sounds like?

Open the demo: nothing to install, no account to create. It opens on a backing track, so the first press plays.

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