Real Music classroom lessons grouped by where they sit on the PICRAT grid.
By Andy Perryer, Director of Education Innovation26 lessonsReviewed September 2026
Music is the most Creative subject on the grid. In most of these lessons students are composing, performing or recording, so the question is what the technology changes about the making.
Sometimes very little. A Year 8 four-note melody composed on GarageBand's keyboard and played live is Creative Replace: a keyboard is a keyboard.
Multitrack recording is where it shifts. One Year 6 child records a four-layer body-percussion groove alone. One Year 9 voice sings and layers a four-part round in Soundtrap. A single student is now doing what used to need a group, and can hear the result straight away.
Code takes it further: a 60-second piece live-coded in Sonic Pi, or a Markov-chain melody generator trained on Bach chorale melodies. Technology can also make sound visible. Year 1 see high and low sounds as rising and falling shapes on a spectrogram, and Year 9 watch the hidden overtone melody of Tuvan throat singing.
Each child composes an eight-bar melody in Song Maker in which the second phrase answers the first, playing it back and changing notes until the answer sounds finished.
Each child composes a 30-second soundtrack for a teacher-supplied silent storm clip, then lines it up with the video and fixes the places where music and picture do not match.
Students write two eight-bar variations on the opening of Beethoven's Ode to Joy in Sibelius, one in D minor and one with a new rhythm, playing each back as they notate.
Students record ten sounds around the school site and turn them into a 90-second musique concrète piece by re-pitching, reversing and layering them in GarageBand.
After studying Purcell's Music for a While, Edexcel GCSE students compose three variations over a four-bar ground bass, recording each as its own track in BandLab and revising one after teacher feedback.
Each child draws lines and shapes in Chrome Music Lab's Kandinsky, presses play to hear their picture as music, then changes the drawing to make it sound like rain or a stomping giant.
Groups of three compose a four-bar body-percussion rhythm in stick notation, rehearse it and record the performance as a voice note in Seesaw for the teacher to assess.
Pairs compose a two-bar question and a two-bar answer on GarageBand's on-screen keyboard, set to the major pentatonic scale, and perform them live over a class drone.
Each child arranges a 24-bar piece from BandLab's loop library in three sections, bringing layers in and taking them out to build and thin the texture.
Students compose a short piece in Sonic Pi from live loops, chance events and a melody built from a variable, then perform it by changing the code while it plays.
Students code a p5.js sound installation for the school foyer that listens to the room's noise level and the time of day, and changes its texture, harmony and density in response.
Students count note-to-note moves in Bach chorale melodies to build a simple statistical model, code it in Sonic Pi to generate new melodies, and critique what it captures and misses.
Students notate four-bar rhythms and a short melody the teacher plays, then play their own notation back in Sibelius, hear where it differs from the original and correct it before the answer is shown.
Students upload their Soundtrap film cues to Padlet, three named peers each comment on harmony, rhythm or texture with a time marker, and composers reply with their revision plan.
Students open a teacher-recorded 12-bar blues in C from a BandLab for Education assignment and mute and solo its four tracks to work out where the chords change.
The teacher plays a swanee whistle, chime bars and a drum into Chrome Music Lab's Spectrogram, and the class watches the sounds appear on the board as rising, falling and smudged shapes.
The same A is played on a tuning fork, a flute, a violin and sung, while a phone running phyphox streams a live spectrum to the board and the class watches each timbre appear as a different pattern of harmonics.
The teacher plays a Huun-Huur-Tu track into Chrome Music Lab's Spectrogram, and the class watches a bright overtone melody step up and down above the singer's drone before they can hear it.