Life Church · Student Band

The Music Theory Maps

Four maps and four games over the same curriculum. Pick one, or let different students pick differently; progress saves separately in each.

4 maps +4 games 160+ teaching nodes endless questions 0 logins works on phones

The Eight

Stacked in the order I would hand them to a student

G 5 C P5 HIT COMBO 24
MAP 01

The Drop

The game your students described · 14 levels, then endless

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.

  • Fourteen levels that get harder honestly: key names, sharps and flats, intervals, scale degrees, chord tones, progressions in numbers, half and whole steps, the circle of fifths, sevenths, minor keys, one level played entirely by ear, all twelve major scales in his zigzag order, and inversions read with skip three skip two
  • Clearing a level does not end the run. The field freezes, the score banks, and you choose: take the next level, or keep going with no tile limit at all and chase a bigger high score
  • Easy to pass, hard to master. Reaching the end of a level clears it, so two or three goes should do it. Every level is 20% quicker than the last and that never stops or levels off
  • Chords fall as their own notes, one tile per note above the key it belongs to, under a bracket carrying the chord name. Double your clearing score in a free run and the single notes start dropping from the centre instead
  • Instant restart on the space bar, combos, and a multiplier
  • Play it with the mouse, a finger, or the computer keyboard. Every key is labelled with its real name, and the black keys carry both of theirs
Play it 0 / 14
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
1 HOME
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
7531
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
GCDEm TWO MAJORS, A TONE APART 45 KEY OF G CHARTEVIDENCE
MAP 06

Giveaways

Name the key from the chords · 11 levels, then endless

Theory 2 Part 5, turned into a drill. Two chords, sometimes one, and you know what key a song is in. This is the skill the curriculum calls the working musician's superpower.

  • The whole giveaway table: two majors a tone apart are the 4 and 5, two minors a tone apart are the 2 and 3, a dominant 7 is always the 5, a diminished is always the 7
  • Real four-chord charts with a giveaway hidden in them, plus the relative-minor confirmation that quietly doubles every clue
  • Every wrong answer explains itself in the same words the curriculum uses
Play it 0 / 11
CGD AEB F#DbAb Bb CGF C D E F G A B THREE CHORDS, ONE SCALE
MAP 07

Three Chords

His scale rule · 9 levels, then endless

Not tones and semitones. A scale is built from three chords: the root chord, the one a fifth down, the one a fifth up, and on the circle those three are always neighbours.

  • Build a scale by picking three adjacent slots, then read one backwards, then find the one that is missing
  • Slide the window one step and the modes appear. Three consecutive chords rooted on the flattest gives Lydian, then Ionian, then Mixolydian, all the way down to Locrian
  • Ends on the best line in the system: major and minor are three slots apart, and three is also the number of degrees that flatten. Same fact, twice.
Play it 0 / 9
GDEmC 156m4 DABmG IN GIN D NUMBERS DO NOT MOVE
MAP 08

Transpose

The number system at work · 9 levels, then endless

The singer needs it in D and the chart is in G. Read it into numbers, read it back out in the new key, and moving a chart is arithmetic instead of rewriting.

  • Both directions, single chords and whole charts, plus Roman numerals so a chart in either notation reads the same
  • The gravity standard: his own circle drawn in numbers with 1 fixed at the top, clockwise 1 5 2 6 3 7 #4, anticlockwise 4 b7 b3 b6 b2 b5
  • Ends where the circle closes: #4 and b5 are one pitch with two names, and that only works because of equal temperament
Play it 0 / 9

What is inside all eight

Same curriculum, eight 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 eight 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 eight, 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. Giveaways is the one that makes them useful at a rehearsal on Sunday, and Transpose is the one the band will thank you for.

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.