Music Theory Map — four maps and a game for the student band

The Five

Stacked in the order I would hand them to a student

MAP 01

The Drop

The game your students described · 6 levels

Notes fall, you hit them on the piano. This is the Geometry Dash and Piano Tiles loop your students named, pointed at real theory instead of nothing.

Six levels that get harder honestly: key names, sharps and flats, intervals, scale degrees, chord tones, then a whole progression in numbers
Instant restart on the space bar, combos, a multiplier, and a best score it remembers
Play it with the mouse, a finger, or the computer keyboard mapped like a real piano

Play it 0 / 6

MAP 02

The Territory

Explorer's map · fog of war · 33 nodes

The whole curriculum drawn as land. Six regions, trails between them, and fog over everything you have not earned yet. Clear a region and the fog burns off the next one.

Six regions: Sounding Shore, Key Flats, Triad Ridge, Scale Highlands, Number Country, Far Reaches
Best first map for a student who has never been taught any theory
Covers the ground end to end, from what a note is to hearing a progression

Open the map 0 / 33

MAP 03

The Circle Road

Ring road · 12 towns · 4 mini-games

The circle of fifths as a road you actually walk. Twelve towns, one per key. Clockwise gets brighter, counter-clockwise gets darker, and you hear it climb as you go.

Three layers on one ring: note names, your number system, and the modes as a sliding window
The spiral that will not close: twelve fifths against seven octaves, animated, then squeezed shut into equal temperament
Four mini-games: missing town, key signatures, number the chord, brighter or darker

Open the map 0 / 22

MAP 04

The Lines

Transit map · 38 stations · 5 interchanges

Theory as a subway map. Six lines, and interchanges where two branches of theory need the same idea. You can finally see that the major scale is a station three lines run through.

Six lines: Harmony, Keyboard, Chord, Scale, Number, Rhythm
Plan a journey: tap anything locked and it draws the shortest legal route there through everything you still need
Best map for the student who wants the whole system in one picture

Open the map 0 / 38

MAP 05

The Ascent

The climb · 8 camps · gates you have to pass

The one with teeth. Eight camps up a mountain, and a gate between every pair that only opens when you answer 5 of 6 right. No clicking "I learned this" to get through.

Every gate has ear questions: it plays an interval or a chord and you name it. A musician's test, not a quiz.
102 questions, reshuffled every attempt, so a retry is never the same test
Fail and it tells you exactly which stations to re-read, with buttons that take you there

Open the map 0 / 33

What is inside all five

Same curriculum, five different ways through it

Harmony + Harmony = Chords. Harmony + Chords = Scales. Chords + Scales = Numbers. Your line: it opens every one of them

Your teaching, not a textbook's. Scales built from three chords, not from a step pattern: F + C + G makes C major, and every map teaches it that way. Skip 3 skip 2 for major, skip 2 skip 3 for minor. The chopsticks and the fork for finding C and F. Brighter and darker instead of sharps and flats. The number system as the point, not an appendix.

The near-miss is in there. Twelve fifths against seven octaves, 129.746 against 128, the 23.46 cent gap, and the 1.955 cents shaved off every fifth to force it shut. The Circle Road animates the spiral failing to close and then being squeezed: the thing a static diagram cannot show.

Sound everywhere, no audio files. Every chord and scale is synthesised in the browser. The circle walk uses a Shepard stack so it climbs by fifths forever without ever bouncing back down an octave.

The rest of the detail

Nothing to install, no login, no server. Each one is a single file. They work on a phone, and they work with the wifi off once loaded.
Progress is kept separately for each and lives in the browser, so a student's phone remembers where they were. Every one has its own Reset in the top right.
Locked never means stuck. Tap anything locked in any of the five and it names what unlocks it and gives you a button straight there. Locked shows gold and grey, never red.
Light and muted on purpose, your own note in the curriculum: "For 12 TET music theory make the colors muted (less saturated) and light themed."
Content covered: what a note is, the harmonic series, octaves and fifths, why twelve notes exist, the keyboard, tones and semitones, sharps and flats, triads, diminished and augmented, sus chords, inversions and slash chords, sevenths, all twelve major scales and key signatures, minor scales and relatives, the number system and the four progressions, changing keys, intervals with anchor songs, the modes and the ladder of brightness, rhythm and time signatures, and ear training.

How to hand it to students

One link, that is the whole thing

Send them this page. They pick one and start. Nothing to sign up for.

If you want to send one instead of five, send The Drop to hook them, The Territory to a beginner, or The Ascent to anyone who needs to prove they actually know it. The Circle Road is the one to put on a screen at rehearsal.

Progress does not sync between phones: it is stored in the browser, so a student switching devices starts fresh. That is the trade for having no logins.