Sound and visuals, in one browser tab
VerkLabs is a free, no-install creative studio where students build music, 3D graphics and interactive visuals by connecting nodes — no coding and no music theory needed to start. A built-in coach walks them through guided lessons, and what they make is a real project they can share with a link. One tool can serve a course on creative technology, music production, media art or game design.
Why it works in a classroom
No license, no lab image, no driver wrangling. Students open a link and start in the same session, on any recent computer.
Beginners get a result in minutes. Students who want more can write their own shader code, build instruments from scratch or wire the project to a microphone, webcam or hand tracking.
Guided lessons set up each step, check what the student has built, offer hints, and do a step for them if they are stuck — so a whole room can work at its own pace.
Music, motion and visuals share one timeline, so the visuals can react to a beat and a sound can follow a camera move. Cross-disciplinary projects need no tool changes.
Every project is a link — open it and see the live result and the graph that built it, side by side. No file formats, no missing assets.
Nothing to license this term, and a documented path onward for students who go on to tools like TouchDesigner.
Seventy-five guided lessons, ready to assign
Each lesson runs beside the student's own project, and none needs any prior experience. They are grouped into paths, each a short run of lessons that build on each other, and the Learn window suggests where to start.
Objects and materials
About 30 minutes. One small program, run for every pixel at once: color a ball from where each pixel is, add time, and repeat a pattern.
About 35 minutes. See the corners of a shape with the wireframe, cut a sharp line through the triangles, and bump the surface by moving the corners.
About 90 minutes. Color, stripes, noise, lighting, a small 3D scene and a camera, finishing with a sphere that reacts to a beat.
About 35 minutes. Rings from distance, sharp and soft edges, and a pattern that travels with time.
About 30 minutes. Deform a lit ball in the vertex shader and see why the lighting needs new surface directions.
About 30 minutes. Static, flicker and drifting clouds, and why shader randomness holds still until the input changes.
About 40 minutes. A color for every particle, an endless rising stream, points that shrink as they go and a cloud that swells with the music.
About 30 minutes. Turn a chain of math nodes into one line, name the inputs and let time move it.
About 30 minutes. Write a small GLSL function as a node and change what it draws.
About 40 minutes. A sphere that follows the mouse, flashes on a key and, with a webcam, follows a fingertip.
About 30 minutes. A click that changes a color, a spotlight that follows the mouse while you hold the button, and a key that swaps its color.
About 30 minutes. Print the time, the mouse and the result of a function on the object, find the bug by reading the numbers, and show them only while a key is held.
About 35 minutes. Make color from hue and lightness, grade it with Saturation, Contrast and Gamma, and switch between four looks with the mouse.
About 35 minutes. Change the position a pattern is made from: spin it, repeat it, ripple it like water and break it with a glitch.
About 40 minutes. Give particles a memory with the State nodes: they climb, land on a floor, remember their speed and bounce.
About 35 minutes. Use Feedback to leave a fading, colored, swirling trail, and draw with the mouse.
About 35 minutes. A glossy ball with a glowing rim and an oil-slick sheen, standing on a floor that fades into the dark.
About 35 minutes. A planet on a tilted orbit, a spinning satellite round it, and a comet, with the Orbit and Rotation nodes.
About 35 minutes. Move, turn and scale an object with events on the Runsheet, ease them, and make a movement that loops.
About 35 minutes. Move, aim, circle and zoom the camera with timeline events, and ease them into a shot.
About 35 minutes. Wire a Param node into a shader and turn it from the Runsheet: set a parameter, ease it and score a color that pulses.
About 40 minutes. A Shadertoy shader brought in as a node, shown on a lit 3D sphere, with a speed input driven by the mouse. For students who already write Shadertoy.
Make music
About two hours. Drums, a bassline, a hook and a pad, arranged into sections and mixed, one layer at a time.
About 75 minutes. A four-chord loop, a bass that follows it and a melody over it, shaped into a short piece.
About 45 minutes. Build an original piece in the spirit of a holiday going wrong: congas, a choir drone, a marimba motif with one note too close, a crying voice, bird calls and a sudden stop.
About 40 minutes. Turn five flat loops into a track with an intro, a build, a break, a drop and an ending, using only where each part starts and stops.
Music styles
About 50 minutes. A boom-chick two-step, three chords on the backbeat, a root-and-fifth bass, a rolling banjo and a singing pedal steel that take turns.
About 55 minutes. The one drop, the skank, a heavy sparse bass and an organ bubble, then dub: an echo and drop-outs.
About an hour. The twelve-bar form on seventh chords, a swung shuffle, a walking bass, and a harmonica call and answer in the blues scale, arranged into two choruses.
About an hour. A heavy beat, power chords cut into a riff, an amp that makes them growl, a bass and a lead guitar, and a chorus that lifts.
About 55 minutes. A boom-bap beat: a kick that leaves space, ghost notes, bouncing hats, a loop of minor sevenths, a booming 808 and a small vocal hook, arranged into a track.
About an hour. The one, ghost notes, a slap bass, scratching guitar and horn stabs, and a stop-time break.
About 55 minutes. Four on the floor, an octave bass, chords that fall by fifths and soaring strings, with a breakdown.
About 55 minutes. A songwriting lesson: choose the chords, write a low verse tune and a higher chorus hook over them, then arrange verses, choruses and an ending and mix it.
About an hour. A groove lesson: four on the floor, off-beat hats, an accented shaker, a bass in the gaps and bouncing stabs, then a break, a drop and the sidechain pump.
About 65 minutes. A swung ride, Charleston comping, a walking bass and a trumpet line on the chords, in choruses.
About 75 minutes. A clean sub and a mid bass that play between the kicks, chords on a rhythm, a hook, a build and the drop.
About an hour. Extended chords on the Rhodes, a round bass, a laid-back hi-hat pocket, stacked backing vocals and a lead melody, mixed smooth.
About an hour. The 3-2 clave, congas and maracas, a nylon guitar montuno, and a melody sung in thirds, in the warm style of the Buena Vista Social Club.
About 55 minutes. A nylon guitar on the bossa clave, a two-feel bass, soft percussion and a flute melody that floats behind the beat.
About 50 minutes. A rolling piano, strings, a held bass, half-time drums and a vocal melody, arranged to build to a chorus and fall back.
Music theory
About 35 minutes. Build the major and minor scales on a piano roll that shades the notes of a key, move the pattern to a new key, and write a melody that ends at home.
About 40 minutes. Stack thirds into major and minor chords, find the chords that belong to a key, and chain four of them into the loop behind many songs.
About 35 minutes. Anchor a melody to the chord tones, walk between them by step, hear tension and release, and land on the home note.
About 35 minutes. Build a drum and bass groove from the beat, the backbeat, eighth notes and notes between the beats, and hear what swing does.
Sound design
About 50 minutes. A synth made from an oscillator, a filter, an envelope and an LFO, hearing what each does to the sound.
About 30 minutes. Double a pitch, shift it by cents and turn a slow wave into a filter sweep, each in one line.
About 50 minutes. A hi-hat from filtered noise, a snare from noise and a tone, and a kick whose pitch falls, hearing what each part adds.
About 40 minutes. Build an effect from nodes on a track: an echo timed to the beat and a reverb, and hear how much of each is enough.
Play live
About 30 minutes. Add a part you play yourself to a backing track: the keys and octaves, notes that fit the key, a chord, then its sound, where it plays and its fades.
About 30 minutes. Wire the mouse into an instrument so its position sets the pitch and volume and its button plays the note, then add vibrato with an LFO.
About 35 minutes. Record what you play as notes you can edit, snap it to the grid, turn it into a loop and layer more parts on other instruments.
About 35 minutes. Let the mouse choose the notes: a scale that fits the music, a zone of the screen that holds them, and a key for a low note underneath.
About 35 minutes. Turn the bottom row of the keyboard into a kick, snare, hi-hat and clap, play a beat over a backing and record it.
About 30 minutes. Play a lead in the air: the camera follows your fingertip to choose notes of a scale and a closed fist sounds them, or the mouse takes over.
Objects and sound
About 55 minutes. A beat of three parts, and a 3D shape that reacts to each part separately: the kick changes its color, the bass moves its shape, the hi-hats flash it.
About 40 minutes. A ball that follows the loudness, the bass, the mids and the highs of any music, and a panel that draws the spectrum as bars.
About an hour. Pulls it together: a sphere and a beat arranged into half a minute of music, a camera move, and a recording of the run to share.
Classical music
About 45 minutes. Write a question and an answer for the grand piano, hear a comma and a full stop, and try the tune on violin, flute and oboe.
About 50 minutes. Write a violin line against a cello melody, note against note: intervals that fit, motion in opposite directions, and why parallel fifths are avoided.
About 50 minutes. A fanfare for seven sampled instruments, built in layers: violins, violas, low strings, horns, trumpets and timpani, then balanced in a hall.
About 45 minutes. One tune that sings against itself: a violin, a flute two bars late and a cello an octave lower.
About 40 minutes. A subject on the viola, the answer a fifth higher on the violin and a countersubject that fits.
About 50 minutes. The subject returns in the bass, with two lines of free counterpoint that obey the rules.
About 50 minutes. A falling sequence in two voices, the subject's return and a stretto that ends on C.
About 50 minutes. A chorale for string quartet: the bass, alto and tenor under a given tune, with no parallel fifths.
About 35 minutes. A left hand that murmurs low, high, middle, high, and a bright first theme for the right hand.
About 55 minutes. A bridge that leaves home, a singing second theme in G and a closing cadence.
About 55 minutes. Break the theme up, wait on the dominant, and bring everything home to C.
About 45 minutes. One tune, ornamented, turned into the minor and set over an Alberti bass.
About 55 minutes. A stately minuet, a lighter trio in G for two instruments, and the minuet again, da capo.
About 45 minutes. Music in three: a bass on beat one, soft chords on beats two and three, and a swaying tune doubled in the flute.
About 55 minutes. A trumpet fanfare, organ chords, a tuba and timpani beat and a dotted-rhythm tune doubled in the horns, arranged as a procession.
The lessons are described in the manual, and students open them from Learn... in the editor. For a longer, project-based path there is also a free starter guide you can assign as it is or adapt.
Courses it fits
Real-time graphics, sound and interaction as one practice, without a programming prerequisite.
Sequencing, synthesis and arrangement, with an AI that can draft a part to work from.
Visuals that react to sound, a webcam or a student's hands.
Shading and lighting taught as node graphs. If your course already uses Shadertoy, this page compares the two.
If your course already uses…
VerkLabs works best as a free, no-install first step beside the tool a course already teaches. These pages say how it maps, and where the other tool is stronger.
Oscillators, filters and envelopes as nodes, and a first step into patching.
The audio graph drawn as nodes, built on the real Web Audio nodes.
A sketchpad beside the DAW, with MIDI in and out.
Live music and visuals without writing the code first.
A stepping stone to TouchDesigner, node family by node family.
The node-graph companion to Shadertoy, where existing shader code carries over.
In February 2026, VerkLabs ran a 3-hour hands-on workshop at Nottingham Trent University: six guided projects, no coding required, building visuals that react to music, voice, webcam and hand gestures. Several students said they wanted to use VerkLabs for their final projects.
Bring VerkLabs into your course
Free for students, nothing to license, and ready to drop into a lab session this term. If you'd like example project files, a live demo for your department, or a workshop like the one at Nottingham Trent, get in touch.
Email education@verklabs.ai