Music education, open to everyone.

We've just released a complete Music Theory Fundamentals learning pathway in the Harmony & Counterpoint section of our Learning Pathways! Designed to take students from the very beginning, the series starts with reading notes on the staff and progresses through scales, intervals, triads and seventh chords, with interactive exercises and opportunities to test their understanding. We are working on the follow up to this now, where we'll explore advanced harmony and voice leading, laying the groundwork for the fascinating world of counterpoint.

It's amazing what you can do with just 16 steps and a handful of percussion instruments! Depending on where you place the kick, snare and hi-hat, you can create wildly different musical feels, from jazz and funk to hip-hop, rock and dance music. Our new Groove and Beat Lab lets you explore some classic rhythmic patterns, listen to how they work, change individual beats and experiment with creating your own grooves. There's even a printable beat grid so students can write down their favourite patterns. Have a play, move a few notes around, and discover how much difference a single beat can make!

After trying what feels like thousands of pianos over the last six months, we've finally settled on a beautiful Alex Steinbach, found through a lovely family here in Newcastle who had been taking amazing care of it. I'm incredibly fussy about pianos — the resonance, the action, the unique character of each instrument - it all has to be perfect. We've absolutely fallen in love with this one, so far its perfect for everything from the delicacy of Mozart through to angular jazz lines. Can't wait to teach on it, make music with it, and host some house recitals here in Fennell Bay!

What was happening in music between 1865 and 1870? Our November Listening Focus explores some extraordinary works from this period, from the early symphonies of Dvořák and Bruckner to Brahms, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky. Discover the historical context, the changing size of orchestras, and the challenges composers faced in getting their music written, rehearsed and performed. Lots of wonderful music to discover and listen to!

What does a scale feel like? Our new Sound Of Scales Lab is an ambient listening environment where melodies wander through different scales and modes above a continuous C drone. Explore pitch collections from different musical traditions, experiment with melodic movement, mute individual notes, and listen to how intervals create different colours and atmospheres. Just press Play and listen!

We've just released a new web-based version of BeatMatrix! Originally developed as an iOS app, BeatMatrix lets you create complex rhythmic patterns with custom accents, subdivisions, repeats and tempo changes. Perfect for practising Konnokol, odd time signatures, polyrhythms and all kinds of rhythmic adventures. It's free, runs directly in your browser, and there's nothing to install!

How much fun does this sound! Melodic Dictation can get more difficult as the melody gets longer, or depending on the intervals in the melody. I created this resourse so students can carefully build these skills one step at a time.

I have been reworking some of my old code from my digital humanities music project (many years ago, before you could do fast things with web dev!). The aim is an aid to help explore historical context of classical composers. I know, how exciting! Will try and find time to refactor more of it and release it.

Such a great way to approach rhythm.

I have wanted to code this up for ages and finally got around to it. A way to track my listening and explore new music.

Exploring ways to simplify analysis of scores. There must be a simlper way! Here is my updated template for orchestration analysis. Will post a video on this.

After a crazy few months, we have finally finished moving. To Fennell Bay on Lake Macquarie. It is lovely here! A room filled with boxes is set to become the new studio! Excited to say it should be set up for teaching in Term 4.

My book of Keith Jarrett Transcriptions. Great for practice and music analysis!

Some new interactive resources for students starting out, to learn the different keys on the piano, and the different notes on the clefs.

For the coding musicians out there, it's probably inevitable that you'll eventually want to port your audio applications to mobile devices. It can get surprisingly tricky! If you're finding yourself getting frustrated, check out our guide to programming audio for mobile browsers.

Open sourcing BeatMatrix and SAJA Music

Transcription from Imaginary Day Album. Full of energy and joy, and so much fun to play.

Always thought this piece was written by John Abercrombie. So his vibe, but turns out he was only playing on it. But the harmony here. So beautiful.