Everything HitJam can do, in the order you meet it: pick a sound, play it with letters or a MIDI keyboard, shape it with the controls under the name.
Sounds
The left column lists the sounds by family. Type in the search box to filter. Each sound has its own page, so you can bookmark or share one.
- Piano: Grand Piano (a recorded concert grand), Electric Piano, Wurlitzer.
- Organ: Church Organ (a recorded pipe organ), Hammond Organ, Combo Organ, Prayers.
- Synth: Slow Pad, Gameboy, Bali Cave.
- Bass: Growler, Tech My Bass, Bass Punch.
- Drum: Standard Drum Kit (a recorded rock kit) and Drum Machine (real TR-808 recordings).
Playing with the letter keys
Z to M and Q to P are white keys; the rows above them are black keys. Shift holds the sustain pedal. Left and right arrows shift by an octave, up and down by a semitone; the limits follow what the sound can actually play.
On a drum kit the left block of the keyboard is the pad grid: Z X C V on the bottom row, then A S D F, Q W E R, 1 2 3 4. The same block on the right side mirrors it.
The control deck
- View switches the desktop stage between a piano and a key grid. On a phone the stage is a pad grid.
- Labels shows letters, note names, or both.
- Octave and Semitone show the current shift, with arrows.
- Sustain shows the pedal state. Volume is the site’s own slider.
- Edit pads (drum kits only) lets you set each pad’s volume, keys and MIDI note, and reset them.
Reverb
Studio, Hall and Cathedral, with a Mix slider. At 0 the sound is exactly dry. Raising the mix softens the direct sound as the room grows, so the overall level stays steady.
MIDI
Press Enable MIDI top-right once. Velocity, the sustain pedal (CC64), the pitch wheel (two semitones), the mod wheel (opens the synths’ filter) and the volume and expression sliders (CC7, CC11) all work. The site’s octave shift applies to MIDI notes too, so a small keyboard can reach the whole piano. The semitone shift does not: a C on your keyboard always plays a C. The × on the chip disconnects, and the site remembers that until you press Enable again.
The spectrum
The bars over the sound’s picture are a live spectrum of what you hear. They stop when nothing is playing and stay off if your system asks for reduced motion.
Privacy
Nothing you play leaves your computer. There is no account and no upload; a few preferences (labels, volume, reverb, pad settings) are remembered in your browser only.
Questions people ask
- Can I add my own sounds?
- Not yet for visitors. New sounds are designed in HitJam’s own workshop and shipped as pages.
- Why does a sound page sometimes show a short loading note?
- The grand piano and the drum kits load their recordings when you open them: the middle of the keyboard first, then the rest. The synths are generated on the spot.
- Which browsers work?
- All modern browsers play; MIDI needs Chrome, Edge or Firefox on a computer.