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About Numbiano
What Numbiano is, and everything in it, on a single page.
1 is Home
Numbiano writes music in numbers that move with the Tonal Centre. The 1 is home, wherever home is, so a tune learned in C is the same numbers in any other Tonal Centre. A red number is a natural note and a blue number is a flat; there are no sharps. Each number has its own vowel to sing, and on a guitar the numbers sit in five shapes that move up and down the neck. The app at app.numbiano.com and this website are the same system.
The curriculum
The Numbiano School Curriculum runs from Year 4 to Year 13, in six terms a year. Each term holds cards: a tool set up for that term's work, a worksheet, the lesson slips. Beside the years run the Numbiano Grades, from Initial to Grade 8: Year 8 reaches Grade 3, the end of Year 11 is Grade 5, and the end of Year 13 is Grade 8.
The tools
18 tools, each opening in a browser with nothing to install, and each saying which grades it serves.
- Echo: the Numbiano pathway: Learn, Train, Improvise and the Solo Stage, from Year 4 to Year 13: hear a phrase, play it back, and climb.Initial to Grade 8
- DR SMITH Listening: A short piece made for each question: the features of the music this grade listens for.Initial to Grade 8
- The Time Machine: One tune dressed in the music of different times and places: hear what changes, then say when and where it was made.Initial to Grade 8
- Ear Training and Sight Singing: Learn each number's sound and its vowel in Number Keys' order, then hear two notes and name the interval - by number, then by quality, then compound intervals - then triads and seventh chords, sung on the Numbiano vowels - and a phrase to sing or play back.Initial to Grade 8
- Rhythm Do Now: Name, play and read the rhythm values and notes of this grade, alone or as a class game.Initial to Grade 3
- Drum Keys Practice: A drum kit on the home row: feel where the weight of the bar falls on a clap or a clave, then play the rhythm words on the snare, from Tea to Giraffe, then the kick, snare and hi-hat parts of a groove, then the whole kit - the fill and the crash - in time with the band.Initial to Grade 3
- Reading the Stave: The treble and bass staves, their ledger lines and sayings, and the same notes on a guitar.Initial to Grade 4
- Stave Notes Practice: Learn the line and space rhymes, name the note on the stave and drag the blob to it: lines, spaces, sharps and flats, three ledger lines either way, treble and bass. Then spell and write words on the stave and copy a riff you hear, with the band in the Tonal Centre of the notes on the page.Initial to Grade 4
- Bass to treble clef converter: A tune in the bass clef, written out again in the treble.Grade 3
- Intervals by Song: Every interval up and down, with the song that starts with it, and on a Numbiano, piano or guitar board.Grade 1 to Grade 5
- Scale & Chord Builder: Build any scale in any Tonal Centre, and the chords on every degree of it.Grade 1 to Grade 8
- Numbers and Letters Practice: A Tonal Centre's letters from its numbers, and its numbers from its letters: find them on the ladder, then name them, then write them down with nothing on screen.Initial to Grade 3
- Chord Progressions: Build a progression, borrowed chords included, and improvise over it on the scale.Grade 3 to Grade 8
- Playing in Time: The count goes round the circuit of the bar: play in time against it.Initial to Grade 8
- Compose over any music: Write a melody, chords and drums, then practise and hand it in.Initial to Grade 8
- Looper: Build a piece a layer at a time, in any scale, with quantise - play it in, or sing it in.Initial to Grade 8
- Numbiano Studio: Arrange and mix what you have made - clips from Compose and the Looper, and takes from a keyboard - on tracks, each with its own fader.Grade 3 to Grade 8
- Lyric Lab: Write a song's words with rhymes, syllable counts, theme words and questions to start you off.Initial to Grade 8
Some pages belong to a year: Typing Practice in Year 4, Four Chords in Year 7, Hooks, Riffs & Ostinatos and Shape of You in Year 8, and Modulations in Years 9 to 13. They are on the curriculum page under their year.
Echo, the pathway
Echo is the Numbiano pathway from a first note to improvising: Learn, Train, Improvise and the Solo Stage, from Year 4 to Year 13. A grid shows where a child is, where they have been and what is ahead, and for a child who is signed in the record travels with them to any computer.
Modulations
48 routes from a Tonal Centre to another and back, across Years 9 to 13, each with 10 melodies. A piece opens in Compose first, where the change of home can be seen, and is then practised. The numbers count from wherever home is.
The Songbook
The Children's and Christmas songbooks: pick a song and play it on the practice surface, sing it, or print it.
The Studio
Numbiano Studio is for arranging and mixing: clips from Compose and the Looper, and takes from a keyboard, on tracks. It is for Year 7 upwards.
For teachers
The teachers' area holds a teacher's classes, lessons, units, lesson slips, posters, clip art and shared resources. A teacher sets work, sees every test and hand-in, and writes comments on work. The teaching content is edited there, without code.
For pupils
My Numbiano is a child's own page: what the teacher has set, their saved and handed-in work, the teacher's comments, their tests and their riff chart.
What is kept
The tools work without anything being kept. Things are kept only when a teacher makes a class and children send work to it: what Numbiano keeps.
Who made it
Numbiano is made by Andy Hawkings, a musician and music teacher in Frome, Somerset. Numbiano™ and the Numbiano logo are trade marks of Andy Hawkings. Write to hello@numbiano.com.