Compose over any music
Drop in any audio file and it listens: the speed, how many bars, the Tonal Centre, and whether it is major or minor. The grid is then cut to fit, and children drag notes onto it — four, three, two, one or half a beat. Rests appear as they go, so every bar always adds up.
Switch between numbers and standard notation to see the same piece written out, choose an instrument, and turn the backing on or off. Everything a child saves is a file they can hand in, open at home and play.
Add a harmony track and drag chords on the same way, or fill it with a ready-made progression — I V vi IV and friends, named for whichever mode the piece is in. Add a drum track and tap hits onto a grid of quavers — kick, snare, closed and open hi-hat — or start from a ready-made beat. The band plays what you wrote.
Then press Practise it: the piece becomes notation on a scrolling ticker, played from the number keys in any Tonal Centre, in your own time or with a band — without leaving the page. Or choose Improvise: the band plays your chords and drums, the notes of each chord are ringed on the keys, guide rails fade the notes outside the scale, the pentatonic or the chord, Echo has the band play a bar, two or four for you to play back (with a complexity control that decorates the rhythm), and Record turns what you play into the melody. Three well-known tunes are built in for anyone with nothing composed yet.
Major, natural, harmonic or melodic minor; pentatonic, full scale or chromatic. Works offline once open.
Open the composing tool
Compose over a band
The same tool with a backing built in, ready for a lesson. Sixteen bars in C, eight bars to write, a count-in before each time round, and nothing for a child to set up or choose wrongly.
The band is Numbiano’s own and plays the chords live rather than a recording — the oldest progression there is, 1, 5, 6, 4 — so the file is a fifth of the size and carries nobody else’s music.
A worked example of the tool above. Ask if you would like one made for a track of your own.
Open the lesson
Scale & Chord Builder
Pick a Tonal Centre and a scale from the dartboards, press build, and the scale climbs a ladder of all twelve notes — so a child can see which notes it uses and, just as importantly, which it leaves out. Hear it played, and read its steps as tones and semitones.
Tap any number to stack thirds on it and the chord lights up on the ladder and sounds. Flattened numbers come up blue, naturals red, with the octave in a circle.
Eleven scales, twelve homes. Works offline once open.
Open the builder
Year 8 Hooks, Riffs & Ostinatos
A two-bar riff on a scrolling ticker, played from the computer keyboard — number keys for the tune, the letter row for the chords. Change the Tonal Centre and the riff moves while the numbers stay the same.
Play the melody or the chords with the band taking the other part, or freestyle. In your own time, or in time after a count-in.
Made for Chromebooks. Works offline once open.
Open the player
Bass to treble clef converter
Turns music written in the bass clef into the treble clef, for the moment in a lesson when a part lands in front of a player who reads the other one.
Works offline once open.
Open the converter
