Discover our recommendations for fun online music games for kids
There are lots of fun ways to build your music skills with online music learning games and activities. This post will showcase some of our favorite online music games for kids, including our very own Hoffman Academy games (available with a Hoffman Academy Premium membership).
How do you make music fun for kids?
Music itself is already fun. Most kids love singing, dancing, and listening to their favorite songs. What might NOT be fun is the amount of practice it takes to develop the skills that will make playing the piano easy and fun too.
To learn a new skill you simply have to practice. Whether it’s basketball, drawing, knitting, photography, multiplication tables, dancing, or playing the piano, to get better at it you have to train your brain to do things a new way. That often means doing the same thing, over and over and over again. No fun? Maybe. But what if the repetition required to build those new skills is part of fun music games?
That’s why the Hoffman Academy team created a series of fantastic educational music games. Based on the core principles of the Hoffman Method, these games make it fun and rewarding to practice the music theory skills you need to become a great musician.
We’ve also found some other websites that feature online music education games and activities. Have fun exploring each one of these music games for kids online.
Music Games for School
Online music games for school make a great supplemental activity for the classroom. Through technology, students can practice and play games that drill music theory concepts like rhythm and note recognition. Many of the games listed below can be adapted for school classrooms. Try playing an online game like Alphabet Towers together on the projector for a fun group way to practice the musical alphabet. Check out our list of 12 Great Piano Games for Kids for more games like Musical Bingo that work well in the classroom.
What are some online music games for kids?
Alphabet Towers
Get ready to read music with Mr. Hoffman’s Alphabet Towers game! This game makes it fun for beginning students to practice their musical alphabet forward, backward, and in skips. Why is that important? A student who has a thorough understanding of the musical alphabet can:
- Easily find notes on the musical staff
- Learn scales
- Identify musical chords
Alphabet Towers gives students a great foundation that will help them throughout their music studies. Once students have the musical alphabet down, they’ll find the transition to sight reading a breeze.
Mystery Melodies
Learn to match what you see with what you hear. Mystery Melodies helps students develop their listening skills and the ability to connect written music with sound. This game prepares students for confident sight reading and will give them the ability to recognize for themselves when they’re playing a passage of music correctly.
When you look at written words, you can hear in your head how they’ll sound. When musicians look at written notes, they should be able to hear in their head how those notes would sound, even before they play them on an instrument. This amazing skill is called “audiation,” and the Mystery Melodies game is designed to help students develop it.
Chrome Music Lab
Full of fun music activities that will help develop musicianship and musical understanding, Chrome Music Lab is a colorful, online musical playground for all ages to enjoy. You can see music in action with the Spectrogram and Sound Waves, explore the mathematical ratios behind music with Harmonics and Strings, play around with Arpeggios, and even create and share your own compositions with Song Maker.
Are there music games for rhythm?
Rhythm Train
Got rhythm? Students learn to hear and read rhythms accurately with the Rhythm Train game. After hearing a rhythm, players select from a set of rhythm cards to notate what they heard. This skill of matching rhythmic sounds with visual symbols will help make reading music a snap.
Rhythm Shredder
Hoffman Academy’s newest and coolest game is here! Take your rhythm reading skills to the next level with Rhythm Shredder. As you play the game, you’ll see a series of rhythm cards, and it’s your job to tap out the rhythms to the beat. If you do, your skateboarder will skate through the city and perform tricks. If you miss, the skateboarder will fall off the board and you’ll have to try again.
The game starts off easy with patterns of quarter notes and rests, adding eighth notes and half notes as you progress through the first two levels. This game will help strengthen the important rhythm component of sight reading skills as well as develop a sense of timing and steady beat. Learn how to read rhythm the fun way with this new and exciting online rhythm game!
Rhythm Flashcards
These physical rhythm flashcards make for a fun and versatile way to practice rhythm. Print them, cut them out, and read the rhythms as you turn over a card. Students can learn and drill rhythms in increasing complexity with the cards and use them to dictate along with lessons. For an innovative way to improve your sense of rhythm, pair the flashcards with the heartbeat mat.
Are there music games for learning or memorizing notes?
Piano Street
Once students learn the musical alphabet, it’s time to connect those letter names to notes on the piano. In his video lessons, Mr. Hoffman uses a simple story called “Piano Street” to introduce the letter names of keyboard notes and help students remember them. The Piano Street game reinforces that learning through repetition and practice.
Piano Street starts out with the basic notes of the scale, then moves on to add sharps and flats so that students will be able to instantly name and find any note on the keyboard.
Staff Crawler
Staff Crawler helps students develop an intuition for the link between note positions on the staff and keys on the piano keyboard. It makes it easy for the beginning pianist to move step by step through the stages of note reading. Beginning with a one-line staff to introduce the concept of steps, skips, and repeats, the game eventually moves on to a five-line staff so students can practice using guide notes and intervals.
Sea Turtle Shuffle
Sea Turtle Shuffle gives music students a fun way to practice identifying notes on the grand staff. Each time the note shown is played correctly on a keyboard at the bottom of the screen, a newly-hatched baby sea turtle makes its way to the ocean! Students start out by learning the guide notes, which are landmark notes that help sight readers navigate the staff. Then, additional notes are systematically added level-by-level until students can quickly and easily read any note, including ledger lines! Practice rounds are followed by a speed round to sharpen new note reading skills.
MusicTheory.net
For the more advanced student, MusicTheory.net offers a complete set of FREE practice games to develop all of your music reading skills. You can work on identifying notes, chords, key signatures, scales, and more! It also has a series of ear training exercises to sharpen your listening skills.
Let the Games Begin!
With these music games for kids online, students can enjoy hours of guided practice and skill-building fun. Chrome Music Lab and MusicTheory.net are free, while access to Hoffman Academy games is included with a Hoffman Academy Premium membership. Find out more and sign up for Premium here.
We hope you enjoyed these online music games for kids. Happy playing!