How Wordsynth works
Wordsynth plays 24 hours of generated music from one word. This page explains how that works, how the project got here, and how to tell me what is wrong with it. It is my first project, so some words will read wrong and some parts are rough.
From a word to a sound
When you type a word, three things happen.
- The word is looked up. A list of about 61,000 words gives each one three ratings from −10 to 10: temperature (cold to hot), brightness (dark to bright) and weight (tiny to huge). A word that is not in the list is rated from the sounds of its letters.
- The ratings set the music. Temperature sets the tempo, from 60 beats per minute for the coldest words to 180 for the hottest, and affects which style is picked. Brightness picks the key: bright words lean major and dark words lean minor. Weight sets how big the sound is. Heavy words get more reverb and bass and slower chord changes. Light words are thinner and change chords faster.
- The word becomes a random seed. The word is turned into a number that starts a random generator, which picks the chords, melody, drum pattern and track names. The generator is seeded, so the same word always gives the same music.
The day, from midnight to midnight UTC, is filled with tracks played one after another. Where you are in the day comes from the UTC clock and not from when you pressed play, so everyone on the same word hears the same moment. Nothing is recorded or streamed. The sound is generated in your browser with the Web Audio API, and the picture is drawn on a canvas.
The same ratings tint the colors, make hot words throw sparks, make cold words snow, and decide how hard heavy words shake the picture on the beat. Rain words (rain, drizzle, monsoon and about sixty more) add generated rain, and storm words add thunder.
Where the ratings come from
I rated about 2,050 words by hand. They are the clear cases like lava, glacier and void, plus feelings and common words. Every other word is estimated. The estimate finds the hand-rated words that are closest in meaning, using GloVe word vectors, and blends in published studies of how words feel and how big they are. The credits are on the About page.
Some groups of related words are rated against each other so they do not tie. The planets are the first group. Temperature follows distance from the Sun, and weight follows mass, so Earth, Mars and Jupiter each get their own values. The estimates are a best guess, which is why I want your votes.
Earlier versions
- The first version was one HTML file. It already had a word list of about 61,000 words, but the three dials were not literal. Temperature measured how exciting a word feels and brightness measured how positive it feels. So “ice” read slightly warm and “lava” was not in the list.
- Then I moved it to Next.js and put the word list in its own file, so the page loads first and the list follows.
- Then I replaced the word list. I was not sure I was allowed to use its source data on a public site, so I started again with a hand-rated core and three literal dials: heat, light and size. The new list covers the same vocabulary with new ratings. That is the list in use now, and it is where version 0.1 starts.
- Since then I added the On air list, a page for each common word, the vote games and rain.
The hidden word menu and voting
Type math into the word box and press Enter to open a menu that lists every word with its three numbers. You can search and sort the list, filter by values, look at the words in a 3D cube, and see them on a star map. Editing is switched off for now.
If a rating looks wrong to you, the vote games at /vote are the place to say so. Each vote is stored anonymously. I will use the votes later to fix ratings, and they do not change anything you hear yet.
Patch notes
Version 0.1 October 2026
- One word plays 24 hours of generated music, the same for everyone on that word.
- About 61,000 words rated again from scratch on three literal dials: temp, brightness and weight.
- Rain and thunder for rain words.
- A page for each of the 1,000 most common words.
- The On air list of words other people are on.
- A hidden word menu (type math) and two vote games at /vote.
Questions, feedback and tips
Found a word that reads wrong, a bug, or have an idea? Send an anonymous tip, or email blinkerbuilds21@gmail.com.
About this project
Wordsynth is my first project. I am learning as I go, so the history above is honest about the mistakes, and I would rather hear about problems than have people leave without saying anything.