Free music technology and sound activities for your class

Students talk, hum and play notes into the microphone and watch the waveform and frequency bars move. Test tones stand in where microphones are off.

See sound - visualize frequencies and understand why A4 is exactly 440 Hz.

Drag the sample rate and bit depth sliders and watch a smooth wave turn blocky, then compare audio formats and why an MP3 is smaller.

Adjust sample rate and bit depth to see how analog sound becomes digital. Trace the full recording chain from microphone to MP3.

Oscillator, filter, then envelope: students change one setting at a time and describe what each step does to the sound.

Explore oscillator waveforms, shape sound with filters, control dynamics with ADSR envelopes, and understand the signal chain that powers every synth.

A first rhythm lesson. Kick, snare and hi-hat on a 16-step grid, then the same drums rearranged into rock, hip-hop and house.

Learn how kick, snare, and hi-hat combine to create grooves.

How a step sequencer works, and why the same pattern feels different at 80 and 140 BPM or in 3/4 instead of 4/4.

Tap a kick, a snare and a hi-hat on a 16-step grid and hear a groove come together. Change the tempo, try 3/4 and 6/8, and play the signature patterns behind rock, hip-hop, house and reggae. Ends in BeatMaker.

Students build their own beat by clicking squares on a grid, and the class counts one out loud together before each plays theirs back.

Free, no account. Eight drums, sixteen steps, press Play. Starts on a groove you can change in one click.

From vibration to the 12 notes, major against minor, and the chord progression behind many familiar songs. A good overview before the deeper pages.

Why some notes sound good together - scales, chords, and the math behind music.

Play major, minor and pentatonic scales, then click notes into a melody of their own and play it back. The pentatonic section lets every student succeed early.

Discover the patterns that make melodies sing.

Why some notes sound good together: students play intervals and chords and connect consonance to simple frequency ratios like 2:1 and 3:2.

Explore how frequency ratios create consonance and dissonance. Play intervals, hear major vs minor chords, and see combined waveforms.

Bouncing balls play a ring of notes kept in one scale. Switch major to minor and students describe how the mood changed when the bounces did not.

Balls bounce around a ring of pegs, and every peg they hit plays a note.

Verse, chorus and bridge: students compare common song blueprints, build an arrangement, and talk about where the energy rises and falls.

Explore the building blocks of songs, compare common structures like verse-chorus and AABA, and build your own arrangement with an energy arc visualizer.

Start here for game sound. Wave shapes plus one rule, rising pitch feels good and falling pitch feels bad, and students build jump, hurt and heal sounds.

Wave Shapes & The Pitch Direction Rule

Waveforms, envelopes and filters, then foley: the everyday objects behind film sounds, like coconut shells for horse hooves and celery for a punch.

Design sound effects from scratch - explosions, lasers, and 8-bit bleeps.

Make a character jump with and without sound, then sort game audio into categories. A strong opener for why sound design matters.

Create immersive game audio - from footsteps to UI feedback.

The follow-up to the basics: stack a base, a harmony and a sparkle into one big sound, and decide which game moments deserve layers.

Creating Rich, Epic Sounds with Multiple Layers.

Each student gets one game event, like a door opening or a missed jump, builds a sound for it, and the room guesses the event from the sound alone.

Free, no account. Turn a laser that fires into one that charges up by moving a single slider.