We’re not sure how long Baroque.me has been around, although Chen registered the domain in March, but this pleasing web app applies the same “balls vs. strings in a land of simple physics” approach to music creation, this time using tones that fit into a baroque — as in the Baroque period of classical music.
So as not to spoil the surprise, you might just check it out before reading our explanation of how it works:
Give it a little time, and the balls move into a solid rotation, playing something you might recognize. You don’t have to leave it as the composer intended. So far as we have discovered, you can mouse over a ball to stop it, or click and drag a ball to move it to a new place while making it exert gravitational pull on the other balls.
The harmonic structure, represented by the strings, stays in place as the balls move, so if you tamper with their normal progression, it can lead to some surprising rhythmic results. Anyway, we thought it was fun.