Beep Box is a Flash-based tool for sketching and sharing chiptune melodies.
It's free! If you like it, please consider supporting the developer. :)
You can insert or delete notes by clicking on the gray rows at the top. Beep Box automatically plays the notes out loud for you. Drag horizontally in this area to adjust the duration of notes. Drag vertically on a note to bend its pitch, or drag vertically above or below the note to adjust its volume. Click above or below an existing note to add a rapid arpeggio/trill.
All notes go into numbered patterns, and the patterns are arranged in a sequence, making a song. You can select a new bar to edit by clicking once on a number below the note area. You can swap the pattern assigned to that bar by clicking again on the selected bar. There are four rows of bars representing different channels that can play at the same time. The gray channel is for drums only.
All song data is packaged into the URL text at the top of your browser. As you make changes to the song, the text after the "#" in the URL is updated to reflect your changes. When you are satisfied with your song, copy and paste the current URL to save and share your song. Re-enter the URL into your browser to load the song again. After loading any song, you are welcome to modify it further.
When Beep Box has focus (click in the Flash rectangle above), you can use these keyboard shortcuts:
Spacebar: Pause or Resume
Z: Undo
Y or Shift Z: Redo
C: Copy the current pattern
V: Paste the current pattern
[ ]: Move the playhead backward and forward
Arrow Keys: Change which bar is selected
1-8: Reassign a pattern to the currently selected bar
Beep Box is developed by John Nesky. Follow his twitter account for updates.
You can download an offline version of Beep Box (right click and select "Save As...") to use when you don't have access to the internet. The features are otherwise the same. You can open BeepBoxOffline.swf in a browser tab to run it, or you can install a Flash Projector to run swf files without a browser.
You can also download and use the source code under the MIT license. You can use the synth code to play Beep Box songs in your own Flash projects.
Neither John Nesky nor Beep Box assume responsibility for any copyrighted material played on Beep Box. No songs are ever received, recorded, or distributed by Beep Box's servers. All song data is contained in the URL after the hash (#) mark, and Beep Box running inside your browser simply converts the song data into sound waves, just like how MP3 players convert MP3 files into sound waves.