Every star is a voice. Its height sets the pitch, its brightness how densely it sounds, its colour the grain of the sound. Touch it, rearrange it, turn it: the music follows.
Ready · OrionGrains 000 / s
Hold anywhere to play · tap a star to wake it · hold a star to silence it
Orion8 stars · choir
Constellation
Sound the grains are cut from
0.0 / 10 s
Record up to ten seconds: your voice, an instrument, the room around you. The sky goes quiet while you record. The recording stays in this browser and is never uploaded.
Pitch
More controls
How the sky plays
Your touch→ A voice of your ownHold anywhere on the sky and grains pour from your finger: height is pitch, left to right is pan and where in the sound you are. Drag across stars to strum them, tap one to wake it, hold one to silence it. Switch to Move stars to rearrange the sky.
Height→ PitchHigher stars sing higher, snapped to the pitch set you choose. As the sky turns, stars cross into new notes.
Turning→ Twelve hoursThe sky is also a clock. One full turn passes through twelve hours, after Peter Schat's Tone Clock: each hour is a three-note shape, from a close cluster (I) through stacked thirds (VI) and fourths (X) to fifths (XII), counted in steps of the constellation's own scale so the music never leaves its key. Within each hour the shape is steered: like a minute hand, the turning sky moves it through three positions, and a low voice carries each move. Every constellation steers by its own second shape, so each walks its own progressions. A soft chime marks each new hour. Choose Tone clock under Pitch to hear the hours in their original chromatic form.
Across→ Pan and positionLeft to right places the voice in the stereo field, and picks where in the source sound its grains are cut.
Brightness→ DensityApparent magnitude sets how many grains a star sheds each second. Bright stars pour, faint ones flicker.
Constellation→ Key, register and rhythmOrion pulses in D Dorian. Matariki, drawn as it appears from Aotearoa, rises before dawn: its nine stars appear one by one, first Matariki, mother of the eight, then Pōhutukawa, for those who died in the past year, through to Hiwa-i-te-rangi, the wishing star. The horizon warms, everything fades, and the cycle begins again. The Southern Cross swells slowly, low in A minor. The Plough walks a melody along its handle. Cassiopeia zigzags through a five-step cycle. At Tanabata, Orihime (Vega) and Hikoboshi (Altair), kept apart by the River of Heaven, drift together over a bittersweet IV–V–iii–vi, meet for a moment as magpies make a bridge, and part again. Both sing in voices made only of grains, hers high and his low; in Move stars you can bring them together yourself.
Colour→ Grain and toneHot blue stars cut short, bright grains with octave sparkle. Cool red giants cut long, dark ones.
Star positions, magnitudes and colours are real catalogue values; at Tanabata, Lyra and Aquila are drawn larger around Vega and Altair so their shapes can be read across the triangle. Every sound is a granular cloud: hundreds of tiny slices a second, each cut from the source with its own pitch, length and place. Choose "Record" to cut the sky from a sound you make yourself.