Cabin fever hitting you hard? Google’s fun new game will keep you occupied.

Huge areas in Europe are currently struggling to cope with the stormy, snowy conditions seen over the last few days, with many climate scientists pointing to the Arctic heatwave as the source of the unusual weather patterns.

While many brave people in the medical and service industries are facing the difficulties of Storm Emma, thousands of others are either working away from home or unable to get anything done at all.

Google solves your cabin fever

As if by magic, Google has come up with a nifty in-browser game just in the nick of time for those ensconced at home, plagued with cabin fever.

Chrome Music Lab has launched a fun music-creation tool called Song Maker, a sequencer that allows you to program loops for two different instruments and save and send the song to others.

Google has numerous Chrome Experiments on the go to show users just how much its browser can do, and this latest feature really is a fun way to spend your time on a stormy day. It’s less complex than something such as Apple’s GarageBand, making it more accessible for even the most tuneless among us.

How does Song Maker work?

A simplified synthesiser program, Google Song Maker is a grid of notes with two rows at the bottom for beats. Instruments range from synths to marimbas and strings, and you can even hook up a MIDI keyboard or microphone if you want to make things really interesting.

Song Maker encourages experimentation, but you are likely to come up with something that sounds good regardless of your ability as it will restrict what notes are available based on the scale chosen. The tempo can be adjusted as well as the octave range, loop length and beats per bar, among other features. 

While it is by no means the first in-browser beat-maker of its kind, the simplicity of Google Song Maker makes it a worthy ally in the fight against weather-related boredom.