Stroke Chime interprets a live stroke as both geometry and time. Three smoothing rules turn hand motion into random high chimes over a lower four-block held-note channel.
Press and draw. The first pointer gesture can arm audio.
The cyan trace shows the raw pointer path. The yellow trace is the smoothed path that follows it. Each numbered marker is a note event fired from the smoothed path as it trails the drawing hand. The labels show the random high chime notes. The lower channel changes every ten note events. The clocked mode creates separated bands on fast strokes because the smoothing step is held to a fixed tenth-second rhythm.
The same stroke can be read in more than one way. Here it is a visible line, a delayed mathematical path, and a small musical phrase at the same time. Motion becomes sound by changing the interpretation context, and the sound changes when the smoothing contract changes.
- Tool note: ChewGumTimeChime v0.1.0, extracted from this toy as a small browser harness for stroke smoothing and timed chimes.
- Repository: ChewGumTimeChime v0.1.0 on GitHub.
- Implementation: this page uses inline canvas and Web Audio code matching the v0.1.0 browser drawing example. Pointer samples remain page-local.
- Interpretation Context: glossary term for reading one stroke as different kinds of output.
- Timing vs. Spacing: sibling toy that isolates motion timing and spacing as readable quantities.
- Native Triangle vs. NES-Style Triangle: sibling audio toy that isolates the sound source as the controlled variable.
ChewGum Animation
Shane Curry, "Stroke Chime," https://shanecurry.com/lab/toys/chewgum-time-chime/, published 2026-04-30.
The melody is not pasted onto the drawing afterward. It follows the math that follows the hand.