Music for Kids

How the course is built

• It climbs. Unit 1 is that every sound starts as something wobbling. Unit 12 is putting a piece of music on and having something to say about it. Each rung assumes the one below it.
• Every unit has a project, written for two ages. The materials are the same, so a Grade 6 child and a Kindergartener can work at one table on the same idea. The older track says what to do alone. The younger track says what the grown-up does.
• No instrument needed. A shoebox and rubber bands, a straw, a cardboard tube, a jar of rice, some glasses of water. Nothing on the materials lists has to be bought.
• The two half-truths are taught properly. "A whole note is four beats" is only true when the quarter note gets the beat, so the course always names the time signature. "An octave is eight notes" counts letter names; it is also twelve semitones. Both are true and they count different things, so the course says both.
• The numbers are computed, not typed. Every frequency comes out of the equal temperament formula starting from A = 440 Hz, so they cannot drift from the maths.
• Composer facts are checked, not remembered. Every name, year and place was verified against Wikidata, and the record number is kept so it can be rechecked.

The twelve units

Everything you need, for the whole course

Twelve projects, and this is the complete list. There is no instrument on it.

• A black crayon or marker
• A calculator
• A cardboard tube
• A drinking straw
• A glass of water
• A jar with a lid and some rice or dried beans
• A jug of water
• A length of string or elastic, about a metre
• A long strip of paper or two sheets taped together
• A metal spoon
• A pencil
• A phone or anything that records
• A quiet room
• A ruler
• A ruler or a tape measure
• A song everybody knows
• A thick pen
• A tuning app, if you have one
• A watch or phone with a second hand for the metronome part
• An empty shoebox or a tissue box
• At least two people who are willing to sing
• Coloured pencils
• Five long strips of paper, or five lengths of string or wool
• Five or more identical glasses or jars
• Food colouring if you have it
• Paper
• Rubber bands of different thicknesses
• Saucepans, boxes or hands to make sound with
• Scissors
• Small objects to use as notes, such as bottle tops or coins
• Something to play music on
• Somewhere quiet to sit
• Sticky tape
• Two chairs or a doorway to stretch it between
• Two pieces of music from different eras
• Two saucepans or a table to tap on
• Wooden spoons, or just your hands

Note values: how many beats is a whole note?

The honest answer is that it depends on the time signature, and this is the single most commonly dropped half of a sentence in children's music teaching. The note values themselves never change: each one is exactly half the one before. What changes is which note gets the beat.

In 4/4 the quarter note gets one beat, so a whole note lasts 4. In 6/8 the eighth note gets one beat, so that very same whole note lasts 8. Saying "in 4/4" costs nothing now and saves real confusion later.

The maths hiding under the music

The A above middle C is tuned to 440 vibrations a second. That is an agreement written down as ISO 16, not a law of nature, and baroque groups still tune to about 415 Hz. From that one number everything else follows: going up an octave doubles the frequency, and the octave is divided into twelve equal steps, so each semitone multiplies by the twelfth root of 2, about 1.0595.

Every number in that table was computed from 440 by the formula rather than typed in, and our tests recompute them on every change. Notice that A3, A4 and A5 double each time. That is why they all share a letter.

The reference sheet

Reading the staff

• Treble lines, bottom to top: E G B D F
• Treble spaces, bottom to top: F A C E, which spells FACE
• Bass lines, bottom to top: G B D F A
• Bass spaces, bottom to top: A C E G

The four orchestra families

A family is named for how the sound is made, not what the instrument is made of. That is why a saxophone is woodwind despite being brass, and why a silver flute is woodwind too: in both cases it is the reed or the air that vibrates. The piano is a keyboard whose strings are struck by hammers, so it gets filed under percussion about as often as it gets a category of its own, and both answers are defensible.

Dynamics, softest to loudest

pianissimo (pp) = very soft piano (p) = soft mezzo piano (mp) = medium soft mezzo forte (mf) = medium loud forte (f) = loud fortissimo (ff) = very loud

Tempo, slowest to fastest

largo = very slow adagio = slow andante = walking pace moderato = medium allegro = fast presto = very fast

Scale patterns, in semitones

• major: 2 2 1 2 2 2 1, adding up to 12
• natural minor: 2 1 2 2 1 2 2, adding up to 12

Twelve composers, oldest first

Every line of this table was checked against Wikidata rather than written from memory, and the record number is kept in the code so it can be checked again. The "where they were from" column is worth a conversation: Bach was a citizen of Saxe-Eisenach, which is not a country any more. The music stayed put and the borders moved.

🎵 1 · What Is Music?

Kindergarten to Grade 2

Music is sound organised on purpose. Every sound you have ever heard began with something wobbling, and music is what happens when somebody arranges those wobbles into a pattern worth listening to.

What it teaches

• Every sound starts with something vibrating: a string, a drum skin, a reed, or your own vocal folds.
• The vibration pushes the air, the air carries it to your ear, and your ear turns it into something you hear.
• Sound needs something to travel through. In space, where there is no air, nobody would hear a drum at all.
• Music has ingredients just like art does: beat, rhythm, pitch, melody, harmony, dynamics, tempo and tone colour.
• Noise and music are not different sorts of sound. The difference is whether somebody organised it.
• Every culture on earth has made music, and most of it was never written down.

Sample questions and answers

Worksheets in this course are generated fresh, with new questions every time you press New Worksheet, and every answer is computed rather than stored.

🥁 2 · Beat and Rhythm

Kindergarten to Grade 3

The beat is the steady pulse you tap your foot to. The rhythm is the pattern you clap on top of it. Confusing the two is the commonest mix up in all of music, and once you can hear the difference everything else gets easier.

What it teaches

• The beat is steady and does not change. It is like a clock ticking under the music.
• The rhythm is the pattern of long and short sounds sitting on top of the beat.
• Beats come in groups, and the first beat of each group feels the strongest.
• The time signature tells you how many beats are in each group. In 4/4 there are four, in 3/4 there are three.
• 3/4 is the waltz feel: ONE two three, ONE two three. You can hear it in a lot of dance music.
• Tempo is how fast the beat goes. A fast tempo does not mean a busier rhythm, and a slow one does not mean a simpler one.
• A rest is a silence with a length. Silence is part of the rhythm, not a gap in it.

Sample questions and answers

Worksheets in this course are generated fresh, with new questions every time you press New Worksheet, and every answer is computed rather than stored.

🎼 3 · Note Values

Grades 1 to 5

Written music needs a way to say how long each sound lasts. The clever part is that every note is worth exactly half of the one before it, so the whole system is built on halving.

What it teaches

• A whole note splits into two half notes. A half note splits into two quarter notes, and so on down.
• So one whole note equals 2 halves, or 4 quarters, or 8 eighths, or 16 sixteenths.
• How many BEATS a note lasts depends on the time signature. This is the bit most people skip.
• In 4/4 the quarter note gets one beat, so a whole note lasts 4 beats and a half note lasts 2.
• In 6/8 the eighth note gets one beat, so the same whole note would last 8 beats instead.
• Every rest has a matching note value, so a quarter rest is one beat of silence in 4/4.
• A dot after a note makes it half as long again. A dotted half note is 3 beats in 4/4.

Sample questions and answers

Worksheets in this course are generated fresh, with new questions every time you press New Worksheet, and every answer is computed rather than stored.

📈 4 · Pitch: High and Low

Grades 1 to 5

Pitch is how high or how low a note sounds. It is not about loudness at all, which surprises people, and it comes down to one thing: how fast the thing is vibrating.

What it teaches

• Fast vibrations make a high note. Slow vibrations make a low note.
• Shorter, tighter and thinner all push the pitch up. Longer, looser and thicker push it down.
• That is why a violin sounds higher than a cello, and a piccolo higher than a tuba.
• Pitch and loudness are separate. A low note can be deafening and a high note can be a whisper.
• When you press a guitar string down you shorten it, which is why the note goes up.
• Blowing across a bottle with less water in it gives a lower note, because the air column is longer.

Sample questions and answers

Worksheets in this course are generated fresh, with new questions every time you press New Worksheet, and every answer is computed rather than stored.

🎹 5 · Reading the Staff

Grades 2 to 7

Written music sits on five lines and the four gaps between them, and that whole arrangement is called the staff. Once you can find notes on it you can play music written by somebody you will never meet.

What it teaches

• The staff has five lines and four spaces. Notes sit either on a line or in a space.
• Higher up the staff means a higher note. That much is exactly what you would guess.
• The clef at the start tells you which letters the lines and spaces stand for.
• In the treble clef the four spaces spell F A C E from the bottom up. That is the easiest thing in music to remember.
• In the treble clef the five lines are E G B D F from the bottom up. Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge is one way to remember it.
• The bass clef uses different letters: lines are G B D F A and spaces are A C E G. Learn one clef properly before starting the other.
• Middle C sits on a little extra line of its own, just below the treble staff and just above the bass one.

Sample questions and answers

Worksheets in this course are generated fresh, with new questions every time you press New Worksheet, and every answer is computed rather than stored.

🔤 6 · The Alphabet and Scales

Grades 3 to 8

The musical alphabet is only seven letters long, A to G, and then it starts again. A scale is a ladder of notes built from that alphabet using a fixed pattern of steps, and the pattern is what gives a scale its flavour.

What it teaches

• The musical alphabet is A B C D E F G, then back to A. Seven letters, over and over.
• The distance from one note to the same letter next time is called an octave.
• An octave is 8 letter names if you count both ends, and 12 semitones if you count the smallest steps. Both are true, they just count different things.
• A semitone is the smallest step on a piano: the very next key, black or white.
• A major scale steps 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 in semitones. Those add up to 12, which is exactly one octave.
• A natural minor scale steps 2 1 2 2 1 2 2. Same twelve semitones, different order, and it sounds sadder.
• The two single steps in a major scale are the places where no black key sits between the white ones.

Sample questions and answers

Worksheets in this course are generated fresh, with new questions every time you press New Worksheet, and every answer is computed rather than stored.

🎶 7 · Melody and Harmony

Grades 3 to 8

A melody is the bit you hum on the way home. Harmony is what happens underneath it. Melody moves across time, harmony stacks up at one moment, and nearly all the music you know is both at once.

What it teaches

• A melody is notes one after another. It is the tune, and it is what you remember.
• Harmony is notes at the same time. Three or more together make a chord.
• A melody moves by steps to the next letter, or by leaps over some.
• The shape of a melody is called its contour. Drawing the shape in the air helps you hear it.
• A phrase is a musical sentence. Melodies breathe in phrases, which is why singers can sing them.
• A round is one melody sung against a delayed copy of itself. Row Row Row Your Boat is the famous one.
• Major chords tend to sound bright and minor chords tend to sound sad, though what a listener actually feels depends a lot on what they grew up hearing.

Sample questions and answers

Worksheets in this course are generated fresh, with new questions every time you press New Worksheet, and every answer is computed rather than stored.

🔊 8 · Dynamics and Tempo

Grades 2 to 7

Two players can play exactly the same notes and only one of them makes music. The difference is usually dynamics and tempo: how loud, how soft, how fast, how slow, and when those things change.

What it teaches

• Dynamics means how loud or soft. The words are Italian, because Italy is where the notation grew up.
• Piano (p) means soft and forte (f) means loud. Adding another letter makes it more so: pp is very soft, ff is very loud.
• Mezzo means medium, so mezzo forte (mf) is medium loud.
• A crescendo means gradually getting louder. A diminuendo means gradually getting softer.
• Tempo means how fast the beat is, from largo (very slow) through andante (walking pace) to presto (very fast).
• A metronome measures tempo in beats per minute, so 60 bpm is one beat every second.
• Accents, pauses and silence do as much work as loudness. The quietest bar in a piece is often the one people remember.

Sample questions and answers

Worksheets in this course are generated fresh, with new questions every time you press New Worksheet, and every answer is computed rather than stored.

🎻 9 · The Instrument Families

Grades 2 to 7

An orchestra is sorted into four families, and the sorting is by how the sound is made rather than by what the instrument is made of. That catches people out, and the exceptions are the interesting part.

What it teaches

• Strings make sound from a vibrating string, bowed or plucked: violin, viola, cello, double bass and harp.
• Woodwind makes sound from vibrating air, usually through a reed or across a hole: flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon and saxophone.
• Brass makes sound from the player's buzzing lips into a mouthpiece: trumpet, trombone, french horn and tuba.
• Percussion makes sound by being hit, shaken or scraped: drums, cymbals, triangle, xylophone and timpani.
• A saxophone is woodwind even though it is made of brass, because a reed makes the sound. It is what vibrates that decides.
• A flute is woodwind too, even when it is silver, for the same reason.
• The piano is a keyboard whose strings are hit by little hammers, so it gets filed under percussion about as often as it gets a category of its own. Both answers are defensible.

Sample questions and answers

Worksheets in this course are generated fresh, with new questions every time you press New Worksheet, and every answer is computed rather than stored.

🎤 10 · Your Voice

Grades 1 to 6

You were born holding an instrument. Singing is the oldest music there is, it costs nothing, and looking after your voice is a skill in itself.

What it teaches

• Your voice works when air from your lungs makes two small folds in your throat vibrate.
• Good singing breath comes from low down, so your middle moves out rather than your shoulders going up.
• Warm up gently before singing properly, the same way you would stretch before running.
• Shouting is not singing, and it damages the very thing you are trying to use.
• The four main singing voices from high to low are soprano, alto, tenor and bass.
• Everybody's voice changes as they grow, and it changes a lot during teenage years. A range that vanishes usually comes back bigger.
• Water helps and shouting over noise does not. If it hurts, stop, because pain is information.

Sample questions and answers

Worksheets in this course are generated fresh, with new questions every time you press New Worksheet, and every answer is computed rather than stored.

🌊 11 · The Science of Sound

Grades 5 to 9

Underneath every note is a wave, and the wave explains everything music does. Two numbers describe it: how many waves arrive each second, and how tall they are.

What it teaches

• Frequency is how many waves arrive each second, measured in hertz (Hz). More waves means a higher note.
• Amplitude is how tall the wave is. Taller means louder. It has nothing to do with the pitch.
• The A above middle C is tuned to 440 Hz, which is an agreement rather than a law of nature. It is written down as ISO 16.
• Orchestras have not always used 440. Baroque groups often tune to about 415 Hz, which sounds noticeably lower.
• Going up one octave doubles the frequency. So the A above 440 Hz is 880 Hz, and the A below is 220 Hz.
• The octave is divided into 12 equal steps in modern tuning, so each semitone multiplies the frequency by the twelfth root of 2, which is about 1.0595.
• Two notes an octave apart sound so alike that we give them the same letter. That is why the alphabet repeats.
• Sound travels about 343 metres a second through air at room temperature, which is roughly a million times slower than light.

Sample questions and answers

Worksheets in this course are generated fresh, with new questions every time you press New Worksheet, and every answer is computed rather than stored.

🏛️ 12 · Listening to Music

Grades 5 to 12

The last skill is the one you keep: putting a piece of music on and having something to say about it. The method is the same four steps that work for a painting, and it takes about four minutes.

What it teaches

• Step 1, describe. What can you actually hear? Instruments, voices, fast or slow, loud or soft.
• Step 2, analyse. What are the beat, the melody and the harmony doing? Where does it change?
• Step 3, interpret. What mood is it going for, and which of the things in step 1 create it?
• Step 4, judge. Do you like it? Now you can have an opinion, as long as you can point at a reason.
• Western music is often split into eras: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern. The dates overlap, because styles do not change on a particular Tuesday.
• Hildegard of Bingen was writing chant in the 1100s, which makes her one of the earliest composers we can actually name.
• Bach, Mozart and Beethoven come from three different eras despite often sharing a shelf, and they sound different for good reasons.
• Florence Price was the first African American woman to have a symphony played by a major orchestra, in 1933, and much of her music was lost for decades before being found again.
• Jazz, ragtime and every popular style since are part of the same story, not a separate one.

Sample questions and answers

Worksheets in this course are generated fresh, with new questions every time you press New Worksheet, and every answer is computed rather than stored.

Working safely

Nothing in this course is dangerous, but three projects carry their own warning: a grown-up does the cutting for the shoebox and the straw, rice and dried beans in a shaker are a choking risk for small children so the lid gets taped, and the singing unit says plainly to stop the moment anything hurts. Those lines are checked automatically, so one cannot go missing when the course is edited.

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