Online Music Game Review: Chord Drops

The following is a guest post by my student M of Chord Drops, an online music game available at Theta Music Trainer:

Chord Drops: A Student Review

Chord Drops is about recognizing chords. It has you choose what chord you think it sounds like. It mainly practices your ear. It had different levels of difficulty and you could choose if you were a beginner . Or pick a different mode.

It was really interesting, and it is a fun way to practice your ear. I liked the icons and how easy it was to play.

I think that it is a fun game for ear training and that it is fun yet very useful

I would have liked a bit more to it because after a while it can get a bit boring. The icon is a coconut.

Chord Drops: Teacher First Impressions

Chord Drops has 20 levels of difficulty, from Beginner to Expert. There is also a Practice Mode and Play Mode.

In Play Mode, You have five lives and are being scored. If you set up an account through Theta Trainer, your high scores could make it onto the High Score page.

It’s a neat, simple, flash game that gets students to develop their chord recognition in the context of harmonic function.

Check out my gameplay walkthrough livestream of Chord Drops:

Online Music Games, Virtual Tours & Concerts

This week, my students and I are exploring various online music games and going on virtual tours. I figure we can all use a lighter load this week and some fun projects to “work” on over the Christmas Break. Here is a quick list of what we have been exploring:

Online Music Games

Orchestra from the Magic Flute: Students listen to a short clip, featuring an instrument in the orchestra. They have to correctly identify the instrument for it to take to the stage.

Channel Scramble: Test your ear to identify which channel has been assigned to a particular instrument.

Kandinsky: Create a painting and hear what it sounds like.

Rhythm: Can you click on the pattern of dots in time without missing a beat?

Spectogram: Check out spectograms created when instruments play a short clip. Create your own.

Name that Note: Personally, I like Note Rush more but for a Zoom lesson, this works.

MusicTheory.net Exercises: Good for note reading, ear training and theory tutorials

Virtual Tours

Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the Musical Instrument Museum boasts an extensive collection of instruments from every country in the world:

Check out Studio Bell’s Speak Up! online exhibition, featuring many talented Indigenous Canadian musicians.

Pianist, composer and history nerd Thomas Little takes us on a tour of the National Music Museum in Vermilion, South Dakota:

The final virtual tour offered during the 2020 Tiqets Culture Festival (showcasing virtual tours of museums around the world) was a virtual tour of the ABBA Museum. Catch the replay here:

Check out this virtual tour of The Beatles Museum in Liverpool:

Finally, the Morgan Library & Museum (NY) takes us on a virtual tour of Beethoven’s workshop:

Virtual Concerts

This fall, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra has been offering free live stream concerts on Fridays. Register in advance to watch live or the replay.

The Metropolitan Opera offers nightly streams of past performances. These are available for free and each production is available for a limited time.

The Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall offers free digital concerts. Register for access.

Do you have a favourite online music game, virtual tour or concert that isn’t on this list? Drop it down in the comments.

Online Music Games

If you're looking for something new to give your students (or if you, a student is looking for something new to play), try these online music games:

• Star Jam - Drop blocks into the space in front of the moving ball to create a musical guitar riff.

• Music Catch - Catch musical shapes that fly onto the screen in time to the music. Yellow is good. Purple is good but Red is BAD.

Enjoy!

(c) 2009 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Terrific Tuesday Link #2

This week, I'm asking my students to check out Flashmusicgames.com . There is a good mix of programs there, for students working on ear training to games for young students. Happy exploring!

(c) 2007 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.