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Students have access to this website if their parents are interested in signing them up for music lessons. Every great musician has gotten lessons at some level!

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This video will help beginning musicians understand the values of notes and rests and how they are shaped. This video is based specifically on the quarter, half and whole note.

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Musical Notation - Learning Music for Kids - The quarter note, the half note and the whole note

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This note value tree is an example I will use as a teacher to explain note values. Students will eventually have to have this tree memorized and be able to add their rhythm counting breakdown to it.

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This link guides students to a fun interactive game where they can begin to learn how to identify notes in different clefs and see how fast they can come up with an answer.

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Learn to read notes with free online music games. "Name that Note" is a music notes game that allows music students to learn how to read music from 4 different clefs and through 3 different difficulty levels. Specifically, these are treble clef flash cards, bass clef flash cards alto clef flash cards and tenor clef flash cards. (C-clef flash cards). The challenge is to correctly name as many music notes as you can within a time limit, with the higher difficulty settings giving you more difficult notes to work with in less time. This free online music game is a wonderful complement to learn to read notes. The music flashcards are all digital, as they are web-based. It creates a random sequence of notes, so it is a random note generator.

Name that Note online music flash cards works on most devices WITHOUT flash and without downloading any apps.

"I really like your flash cards, and have given the link to all my recorder students."

Free Online Music Flash Cards, Name that Note Game Will Keep Score!

Scores are saved and displayed to promote friendly rivalry. Winners are invited to list their names. Email addresses are requested for verification purposes.

Please Keep it Child-Friendly!!!

CAN WE PLEASE REQUEST THAT YOU DO NOT USE EXPLETIVES WHEN YOU CREATE YOUR NAME? There are kids who enjoy this and we prefer that they are not exposed to negative words. Will you please do your best to honor this request? Unfortunately, due to some defiant players, who do not follow the above request, we are forced to PURGE the entries every 3 months to give people a fresh start.

Your Information is Secure

Emails will NOT be posted or ever, ever used for solicitations of any kind. You can play the game without entering your name and email address but your winning number will not be posted.

Game not Working?

Some browsers are fussy and that causes the game to bog down or display a black screen or a white screen. If this is the case, please research for your browser how to EMPTY CACHE and DELETE COOKIES for richmanmusicschool.com Also, make sure you have not inadvertently disabled javascript for your browser. If so, please research how to re-enable it. Also, Some people have very strict malware software that could be blocking our site. If so, please whitelist richmanmusicschool.com If these suggestions do not help, please let us know what you are experiencing and we will try to help. Thank you.

Name That Note Credits

Please see here for background info on the Name That Note game.

Extra Help

You can play Name that Note online music flash cards always for free, and as long as you like! If you need to know what the names of each note are on the treble and bass staves, you can learn them from our how-to-read-music page.

Other Products We Recommend

How to Read Music with Music Reading Tool This ingenious sliding card helps you see the connection between the musical staff and the piano keyboard.

This classic book is written by Howard B. Richman! An innovative step-by-step sight reading program for musical keyboard players of all levels, from Sound Feelings. The Super Sight Reading Secrets book has provided the answers to sight reading problems for thousands of pianists and keyboardists!

Additional books to help with sight-reading.

Online Private Music Teachers - If you feel that you need personal instruction to help you on your instrument and your music-reading skills, and you cannot find someone locally, we have a fantastic list of many online teachers from which you may choose.

Alternative Games

Here is a VERY sophisticated FREE app by my friend, Patrick Collins that gives you a TON of control to work on reading notes and rhythms. It's called "NoteBlaster."

Here is a free music-learning website with music theory exercises and learning tools - based on a belief that everyone should have the opportunity to learn music.

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Name That Note - Online Music Flashcards

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Practice your note-reading skills on 4 different clefs and 3 different difficulty levels.

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This link provides students with the meanings and names of notation found commonly in music.

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Here's a fun musical instrument word search to help students remember the names of Musical Instruments we will have discussed in class.

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Music History is a crucial part to music education and this timeline of influential composers will help students understand how modern music came to be the way it is.

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Students will review the musical instruments they have learned using this interactive website so that they are able to know what they are listening to when they hear music.

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Orchestra Families Quiz - Match instruments with their family!

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Every Musician needs a great ear for various reasons. This ear training exercise will help young musicians develop relative pitch and be able to identify various notes in different octaves.

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This is a link to where our listening activities will come from. Students will be able to revisit the music we listened to in class and write a reflection on what they have heard and if they enjoyed it or not.

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San Francisco Symphony - Listening: Music Playlists and Activities

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Special playlists designed for family listening, with fun activities to print out. Listen, learn, discover, and have fun!

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This link is to help students study for their music vocabulary quizzes. This dictionary has just about every musical term you could ever think of.

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Word of the day

Note: Although this is classified as a plucked idiophone, the tongues (lamellas) are typically depressed and released creating the same effect as being plucked. This is done with the thumbs and fingers of the performer. The tongues can also be plucked as another type of performance effect.

HISTORY: The Kalimba is a modern version of the African mbira. It can be a solo instrument or as an accompaniment to singers, musicians and dancers. In the 1920's, Hugh Tracey came from England to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to help his older brother run a tobacco farm. He became fascinated by the local music culture. Through the encouragement of prominent composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, he decided to make a study of African music and eventually create the International Library of African Music. The mbira was one of his greatest interests and created the Kalimba based on the African mbira. Introduced by Tracy in the early 1960's, Kalimba was the registered trademark for his diatonic instrument that soon became popular around the world. The word Kalimba literally means little music. It was well suited for Western music and made it easy for the performer to play harmony using both thumbs.

As with the mbira, the name Kalimba is know throughout much of Africa, but regionally, the name mbira is more commonly used in Zimbabwe, while the name Kalimba is used in Kenya, the name ikembe is used in Rhuanda, and the name likembe is used in the Congo. Other names are bit less common such as sanza, sansa, marimba, and marimbula. Additionally, there are more generic names of finger harp, gourd piano, and thumb piano that are often used in the west.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: The basic Kalimba is a modern mbira with a soundbox with metal keys or tongues (called lamellas) attached on the top. The keys or tongues are sometimes made from cane. The soundbox is Kyatt wood (an African hardwood), with keys or tongues made out of European spring steel. Home made versions can be made from old spoon handles, bicycle spokes or spring wire cut and hammered to the desired shape. The keys or tongues are plucked with the thumbs, or with combinations of thumbs and fingers. The keys usually consist of 20 to 24 metal tongues mounted across two bars at one end attached to the soundbox with a wooden dowel holding them in place. The bar closest to the soundhole serves as a bridge, the other to provide a means for the dowel to hold the keys (tongues) in place. The free ends of the keys (tongues) are positioned at different lengths to produce the variety of pitches. The length of the vibrating end of the keys (tongues) determines the pitch (a shorter key or tongue produces a higher pitch, and a longer key or tongue produces a lower pitch).

SOUND PROPERTIES: The Kalimba produces a haunting, fluid percussive sound that is considered tranquil and enchanting. Since you can play either simultaneously or alternating between both thumbs, harmonic and rhythmic effects are possible. Many effects can be employed by plucking up or down on the keys (tongues). Although the Kalimba was created to appeal to the Western music sensibilities, many Africa musicians will employ the practice of adding buzzing effects to the instrument. This is created by wrapping the tongues with wire or adding a mirliton device. This adds an additional buzzing or humming character to the sound of the instrument which is an important sound in many of the tribal cultures. Often, snail shells or metal bottle caps are often attached to the soundboard or the soundbox to create or enhance the rich buzzing sound. The buzzing is thought to clear the mind and allow the listener to focus totally on the music. These buzzing effects are not commonly used on the diatonic versions of the Kalimba or outside of the African tribal cultures. Most recordings do not include these effects as they tend to favor the pure sounds of the instrument.

The actual Trademarked Kalimbas come in three different models, the treble, celeste and alto. The Celeste Kalimba has a flat design with a simple soundboard (without a sound box) that produces a crisp sound and has a seventeen-note range. The Treble Kalimba has the same seventeen-note range, but it also has a soundbox that provides deep resonance to distinguish it from the Celeste Kalimba. The Alto Kalimba features the same soundbox as the Treble Kalimba, but has a more limited fifteen-note range.

RANGE: The actual Trademarked Kalimbas are typically tuned to G-major and come in three different models. The Celeste Kalimba has a seventeen-note range from B3 to D6. The Treble Kalimba has the same seventeen-note range. The Alto Kalimba has a more limited fifteen-note (two-octave) range from G3 to G5.

The tuning on the diatonic Kalimba is similar to likembe tuning from Central African countries. The scale is laid out by alternating notes left and right from the fundamental G3 in the center. This puts thirds next to each other, so that by playing two or more notes at once, even chords are possible. The tongues are laid out in the following pattern - F♯5 - D5 - B4 - G4 - E4 - C4 - A3 - G3 - B3 - D4 - F♯4 - A4 - C5 - E5 - G5.

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Word of the day Note: Although this is classified as a plucked idiophone, the tongues (lamellas) are typically depressed and released creating the same effect as being plucked. This is done with the thumbs and fingers of the performer. The tongues can also be plucked as another type of performance effect.