Cool Online Instruments and Games for the Music Classroom

There’s a growing list of fantastic online musical “instruments” and games that are a great resource for teachers in the music classroom. They can be effective when used with students on laptops and desktops, but they also work really well in a one-computer classroom with a large screen or better still, an interactive whiteboard.

Get Creative with Pentatonic Improvisation

  1. Tone Matrix by Andre MichelleAndre Michelle's Tone Matrix
  • Add (or remove) sounds by clicking on a box on the grid
  • Press the spacebar to clear the whole grid and start again
  • Based on the pentatonic scale

  1. AQWERTYON
  • Turn your computer keyboard into a musical keyboard
  • Play along with your choice of Youtube videos
  • Select your scale type, mode, and root, and have hours of fun!

  1. AudioTool
  • The big brother of the Tone Matrix
  • Add drum patterns, other sounds and change the tempo
  • Produce music online

Online Instruments

The next few online “instruments” are a bit of fun and would work really well with an interactive whiteboard. Many don’t allow you to record or export your songs, so don’t go composing your masterpiece using these apps unless you’re notating it as you go! The better ones allow you to play notes using your computer keyboard in addition to clicking on keys or buttons with your mouse.

  1. Drum Machine
  • A loop-based rhythm generator

  1. Drum Kit
  • An online drum sampler

  1. Theremin
  • Play with waveform and different effects
  • You can also loop and record

Online Music Games

9. Incredibox

  • A cappella fun
  • Create your own arrangement using vocal percussion, backing parts and lead vocals

10. Don’t Worry Be Happy game (Bobby McFerrin)

  • Another a cappella “game”
  • Also good for discussing arranging techniques
  • Activate parts in one at a time by dragging the part name across to the white area
  • Notation allows you to follow each part

11. Ball droppings

  • Physics and music combine
  • Draw lines across the screen to make the balls bounce and create different pitches
  • Good for interactive whiteboard

12. NY Phil kids

  • Excellent collection of educational music games for primary and middle school students
  • Create a minuet
  • Match composers or instruments
  • Beat Polly Rhythmic in the percussion showdown
  • Sort instruments into their families
  • Experiment with instrument sounds in the Orchestration Station
  • and more

Online Drum Sequencers

  1. Groove Pizza
  • Uses a circular ‘pizza’ interface to represent rhythmic patterns
  • Create a drum pattern by using the drum grid underneath the ‘pizza’
  • Useful for cross-curricular maths-music lessons because it allows you to view rhythmic patterns as shapes and angles

  1. HTML 5 Drum Machine
  • An online virtual old-school drum machine
  • Build beats, adjust the playback sound, the tempo and set up A/B patterns
  • Download the pattern as a WAV file and then import it into other software

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14 Comments

  1. […] Music Sites from Twitter – Cool online instruments and games for the music classroom Katie Argyle – @katiesw1 http://musictechtips.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/cool-online-instruments-and-games-for-the-music-classr… […]

    • Jacky August 15, 2020 at 7:46 pm - Reply

      I also use a resource https://chordchord.com/ I find it very useful for musicians. Here you can create and find interesting chord sequences. Also this site can help you improve your music or offer you some good chords to create music.

  2. […] Recommended posts: “Tutorial: How to Convert Audio Files Using iTunes,” “Cool Online Instruments and Games for the Music Classroom,” ”Musescore in 10 easy steps,” and “11 of the Best Free Sheet Music […]

  3. soundationstudio October 29, 2010 at 11:31 pm - Reply

    What about Soundation studio, no other music making web app has, recording, 9 virtual instruments, 400 loops, 11 real time effects all free plus more paid features.

  4. […] had trouble sleeping especially after my first tour in Iraq. One night I came across this silly website that had some music tools. I spent all of my waking hours (that night) playing with these […]

  5. Rameshgar February 10, 2016 at 4:54 am - Reply

    Thanks. Great list of good websites.
    I want to introduce a website that has web apps for playing musical instruments online, sight reading and ear training.

    http://rameshgar.com/en/

    You can play piano, harp and persian musical instruments in your browser by your keyboard or by touch in mobile and also record what you have played.

  6. […] Cool Online Instruments and Games for the Music Classroom – There’s a growing list of fantastic online musical "instruments" and games that are a great resource for teachers in the music classroom. They can be effective […]

  7. […] is one of the most popular free cross-platform audio editing programs. 2. 3. 4. trakAxpc 5. Cool Online Instruments and Games for the Music Classroom | Midnight Music. Cool Online Instruments and Games for the Music Classroom There’s a growing list of fantastic […]

  8. SoMiDo Music March 17, 2019 at 7:54 pm - Reply

    Thank ypu Katie for this list of Online Instruments and Games for the Music Classroom!

    If you are thinking about to update this page in the future, take also a look at
    SoMiDo Music q https://so.mi.do

    Have a nice day!

    • Katie March 18, 2019 at 2:23 pm - Reply

      Thanks for sharing that – nice set of games!

  9. Myvoicemod March 19, 2019 at 9:54 pm - Reply

    Simple Voice Changer – Apply funny effects to your voice with this easy to use free online
    https://myvoicemod.com

  10. Jacky July 28, 2020 at 11:42 pm - Reply

    One of my favorite apps for music creation is https://chordchord.com/. It helps getting some more skills and improve musical compositions as well as suggest you some sweet chord sequences to make music. Basically that’s how I learned progressions myself. I’m more hands-on learner so this website worked pretty well for me.

  11. anna August 25, 2020 at 2:39 pm - Reply

    damn everybody prefers other music apps, sorry katie…

    • Katie August 31, 2020 at 10:15 pm - Reply

      This post is a bit old now – first published 10 years ago!

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