The curriculum, Year 4 to Year 13

A short piece of music, made for its question, and a question about it: Dynamics, Rhythm & Duration, Structure, Melody & Pitch, Instrumentation, the four Ts (Texture, Timbre, Tonality, Tempo) and Harmony. Because every piece is built for its question, there is always a clear answer: the second time really is louder, the tune really does move by step, the cadence really is imperfect.

Choose the year and the elements to listen for. Plain words for younger classes, with the terms beside them from Year 7 (crescendo, conjunct, homophonic, ternary). The chords come from the openings of real songs; the tunes are Numbiano's own. Every round's score goes to the teacher.

Needs the internet for the instrument sounds.

First the numbers themselves, in Number Keys Practice's order — the 1, then the 5, 3, 4, 6, 2, 7 and the circled 1, a rung at a time. Hear each number from the 1 on its own vowel, then name it by ear.

Two notes play: what is the interval between them? Year 4 starts with the four a class already sings — the 2nd of Happy Birthday, the 3rd of the Saints, the 5th of Twinkle Twinkle and the octave of Somewhere Over the Rainbow — and each year adds more, named by number at first, going down as well as up. Year 9 names them by quality (a major 3rd, a perfect 5th), Year 10 hears all twelve both ways, and Year 13 the compound intervals past the octave. It follows the Numbiano Grades too, from Initial to Grade 8.

Miss one and the song that starts with it plays from the very same two notes. On your own or as a class game on the board, and every round's score goes to the teacher.

Then triads, from Year 8 (Grade 3): the chord on every note of the scale, up to the octave and back down. Major or minor at first; the diminished triad and natural minor join in Year 9, the augmented triad with harmonic, melodic and chromatic in Year 11, and from Year 12 which way up it is — root position, first or second inversion.

And seventh chords, from Year 12 (Grade 6): major, dominant and minor 7ths, with the half-diminished and diminished 7th in Year 13 (Grade 8).

And sing it back, or play it back: a phrase is sung from its 1, and the answer is sung into the microphone or played on a keyboard (plugged in, the number keys, or the board on screen). Three notes in Year 4, the melody from memory in Year 9, seven notes by GCSE. Any octave is right.

The history of music, heard. One tune, the Numbiano motif, played the way music sounded at thirteen stops on a timeline, from plainchant about 900 through the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic, the blues, Impressionism, the twentieth century's broken rules, the twelve-note row, film music, swing, minimalism and rock, to the hip hop beat and electronic dance; and around the world, drumming from West Africa, samba from Brazil, reggae from Jamaica, folk dance from the British Isles and two features of Indian classical music, with gamelan as a card to go and hear.

Each stop says what to listen for in DR SMITH's words, tells its story in a few lines and names a real piece to go and hear. Five dials change one thing at a time - the instrument, the bass, the rhythm, the dynamics and the harmony - so a class hears which one carries the century.

Then the test: Which came first?, When and where was it made? and What gives it away?, on your own or as a class game, every round's score to the teacher. Every piece is made up by Numbiano in the manner of its time or place, and says so.

Needs the internet for the instrument sounds.

A starter for the first five minutes of a lesson. A note value is shown — as the written symbol, as it looks in a piano roll, or both — and the class names it: the UK name, the US name and the Numbiano special word. A right answer is congratulated; a wrong one shows the answer.

Choose the year group and the values grow with it: Year 4 starts on juice, soup, tea, shh and coffee, and by Year 8 every value Numbiano has is in play, 6/8 and the triplet included. Tap an answer, or press 1 to 4 on the Chromebook.

Play it: the value is shown in any of those ways, a bar of clicks counts the class in, and the child holds the space bar down for as long as the note lasts — or presses any key of a plugged-in keyboard, or the HOLD pad on a tablet. Their playing is drawn against the value, note by note: on time, early or late, held too short or too long.

Set a timer of 1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes to see how many a child can answer. With the class code in, every round a child finishes is sent to the teacher, and the teacher sees the whole class in a table — a child a row, a week a column — to watch them improve, and can download it as a spreadsheet.

Class game: run a quiz on the board for the whole class. The children join on their Chromebooks with the class code, answer on their own screens, and the faster right answers score more — a board after every question and a podium at the end, with everyone's result kept in the class's scores.

Play in time: a rhythm of one or two bars, made from the year's values, played on the space bar in time with a drum backing — shown as notes, as the rhythm grid, or as its special words, and marked note by note.

Find the note: a note is shown by its letter name, on the stave, as a Numbiano number in a Tonal Centre, or only heard, and the child finds it on the keyboard on the screen, on a plugged-in keyboard, or with the Chromebook's own keys. Year 4 starts on the white keys; by Year 8 it is three octaves, both clefs and every Tonal Centre.

Play the tune puts rhythm and pitch together: a short tune shown as Numbiano numbers, letters or on the stave, or only heard, played on the keyboard in time with the drums and marked note by note for time, length and key. Works offline once open (sending scores and the class game need the internet).

Every interval opens a song you already know. A major 2nd is the start of Happy Birthday; a perfect 4th is Amazing Grace; an octave up is Some-where Over the Rainbow. Twelve distances, each going up and each going down, twenty-four songs — hear the two notes, and if you cannot place them, the song is waiting in the wings: sing it in your head and the distance is yours.

Learn plays any interval from any starting note, then the song it opens. Test picks one, plays the two notes and asks you to name it, with the song a tap away as a hint and a score across the run — a point is a first answer with no help.

And on an instrument: open a Numbiano, piano or guitar board and the start note is its 1, so every interval is a number — a major 3rd up is the 3, a perfect 5th the 5, a minor 7th the blue 7. The row From the 1 shows all twelve at once, and whatever two notes you play, the page names the interval between them.

Twelve intervals, up and down, from any starting note in three registers. Works offline once open.

The treble stave, three ledger lines above and three below, with every line and space named and coloured — each note wearing the colour of its own pitch, so the chart on the board and the coloured tubes and chime bars in the room match. Tap any note to hear it.

Turn the numbers on and each note shows where it sits in the Tonal Centre you have chosen. Move the Tonal Centre and watch: the letters stay exactly where they are and every number moves. That is the whole of the relationship between a stave, which is fixed, and Numbiano’s numbers, which are relative — on one picture, in one gesture.

Treble or bass, three octaves either way, with six do-now starters built in. Works offline once open.

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.

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.

A big number travels round the screen, arriving on each beat of the bar — the 1 at the bottom, then round and back to the bottom again. It is a target to play on: a chord, a note, a clap, played as the number lands. Every beat keeps its own place on the screen, so a player always knows where to look for what is coming next.

Choose 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4 or 6/8 and the shape changes with it — a triangle for three, a square for four, a pentagon for five, a hexagon for six — with the strong beats bigger and in red. Set any tempo, and move it while the music is playing. Behind the count, a click or a drum beat: straight eights, a shuffle, a backbeat, a march, a ballad, a waltz or a six-eight lilt.

Five time signatures, any tempo. Works offline once open.

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.

Build a progression from the chords of the scale — tap I, V, vim, IV or any of the seven, in any order, up to eight bars — and the band holds it round while children play over the top on their own instruments. Ready-made progressions are a tap away for a class that needs to start playing straight away.

The bar that is sounding is the big one, so the next chord is somewhere a player is already looking. Underneath, the whole scale: any of the seven numbers will work, and the notes of the chord sounding now are ringed, so landing on a ringed number as the chord changes is the step from playing notes to playing music. Change the Tonal Centre and the numbers stay exactly where they are — only the letters move.

Switch the chord dictionary on and every chord in the progression is drawn on a keyboard or a guitar, with its notes and its fingering, a tap from hearing it.

Major or minor, twelve Tonal Centres, any tempo, seven drum beats. Works offline once open.

Plug a keyboard into the Chromebook and build music in layers: record a clip, let it loop, and play the next part over the top. The looper follows the same rules as the Numbiano app — choose a length, count in for a bar, record, then overdub as many layers as you like and undo the last one if it went wrong.

The notes of the chosen scale are drawn on the screen, each with its number and its letter, so a class can see what they have to play with before they play. Each button can play a single note or a whole chord. Every clip has its own start and stop, opens up to show every note in it for editing, and can be quantised to the beat. No keyboard? The notes on screen and the Chromebook's own keys play too — or switch on Sing into it and sing: each note you hold goes into the clip, pulled to the nearest note of the scale, and plays back on the clip's sound. Save a session as a file, or hand it in to the class.

Six clips, thirteen scales, twelve Tonal Centres, five time signatures, any tempo. Works offline once open.

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. Bring a piece in from a saved file, a MIDI file or straight from what this Chromebook's Compose and Looper already hold, and every part becomes a track of clips on a timeline: drag a clip along, stretch it so its music goes round again, split it, copy it.

Plug in a keyboard, or play the Chromebook's own number keys, press Record, and after a bar of count-in your playing becomes a new clip. Open the mixer and every track has its own place left to right, its own low, middle and high, a touch of room and an echo timed to the music.

For Year 7 and up, on a Chromebook, a laptop or a tablet. The project is kept on the Chromebook it was made on. Works offline once open.

Write the words of a song, a part at a time — verse, chorus, bridge — and watch it take shape as you go: every line shows how many syllables it has and a coloured rhyme letter, so a class sees ABAB appear as they write, and can choose a shape to aim for.

The toolbox follows the line you are writing: rhymes for its last word (and near rhymes, and a way round a word that will not rhyme), related words, the words and ways in for sixty-four themes, and the songwriting questions that turn a title into a song. A tap adds a word to the line.

Sparks for when the page is empty: idea dice (a feeling, a thing you can see and something that happens), a feeling said as a metaphor and a simile, the five senses, opposites, words with the same first sound, titles, and a cut-up that shuffles your own words into lines you would never have written.

Rhythm says the line you are writing in the Numbiano rhythm words — tea, coffee, creamsoda — with a syllable under every note, a few ways round, and Hear it taps it on a woodblock after a count of four — or Sing it, and the Numbiano voice sings your line to that rhythm on its own vowels. When the song is done, hand it in to your teacher.

The song keeps itself on the Chromebook, saves as a file and prints. Works completely offline.

A poster for each year group, Year 4 to Year 13: what dynamics, rhythm, structure, melody, instrumentation, texture, timbre, tonality, tempo and harmony mean, the words that year meets for each, and its note values. An element a year has not met yet says when it comes. Print on A3, or larger.

• Year 4
• Year 5
• Year 6
• Year 7
• Year 8
• Year 9
• Year 10
• Year 11
• Year 12
• Year 13