Chrome Music Lab - Song Maker Tutorial

Chrome's Song Maker is growing in popularity, so i decided to make a tutorial on how to use the letter notes, posted on this website, to create songs in Chrome Music Lab - Song Maker.
I will try to keep it as brief and simple as i can, if you don't understand something please leave a comment and i'll try to explain better that part.

How are the letter notes formatted here?

First, let's learn a bit about how the songs are written here, and what are the "Octaves".
An average piano / keyboard has keys for 4-5 octaves, as you can see in the picture above. Octaves 4, 5 and sometimes 6 are use to make the melody in a song. Octaves 1, 2, 3 are used to make the bass in a song.

The songs listed here are formatted like this (it's for Megalovania):

RH:5|--d---------------d-------|
RH:4|dd--a--G-g-f-dfgcc--a--G-g|

RH:5|--------d---------------d-|
RH:4|-f-dfg----a--G-g-f-dfg----|
LH:3|------bb--------------AA--|


The numbers in front of each line represent the Octave. RH and LH, means "right hand" and "left hand", it's helpful for people who play the songs on pianos, so in Song Maker you can ignore them.

One dash (-) between notes represent an empty space in Song Maker

1. The Song Maker settings.

You need to set the Scale to "Chromatic", to have all 12 notes on each octave. Also set the Range to "3 octaves" (you can only use 3 octaves at a time in Song Maker, but some songs posted here use more, in that case make only the high octaves (4, 5, 6) in Song Maker, it should sound ok)

With the Start on option you can choose what octaves to use for a song:

• Low - you have octaves 2, 3, 4
• Middle - you have octaves 3, 4, 5
• High - you have octaves 4, 5, 6

For most songs Middle setting is what you'll need, for some of them that reach notes from Octave 6 you need to use High. The Low setting you may never use...

2.  How to use the letter notes in Song Maker

Now that you know about octaves, you need to know where each letter note needs to go. The picture above shows you exactly where each note goes.

Here's also a close-up with the letters

3. Example song

Here's an example of how a Megalovania looks in Song Maker.

4. Alternatives

If you want a more complex alternative to Chrome Music Lab you can try Signal. It is very similar to Song Maker but it has all the octaves and it let's you download the songs too.