Claptoscore for music teachers

Tap a rhythm, send it to your students as a link, and they practise it with a click and a score for every note. No accounts, nothing to install, free.

Set rhythm homework with a link

1. Open the main tool, set the tempo and meter, and tap the rhythm on the space bar, a touch screen or a MIDI pad. Claptoscore writes it out as notation. Check it, and use Fine-tune if a note came out wrong.
2. Press Share under the notation and give it a name, for example "Homework week 3".
3. Copy the link and post it in your class group, learning platform or email.

Your students open the link on a phone, tablet or laptop. They press Listen to hear the rhythm with a click, then clap it back. Every note turns green, amber or red, and they see how many notes were on time and by how much they rushed or dragged. When they are happy with it, Copy result gives them a line of text with their score, the tempo and the date, to send back to you.

The link holds the rhythm itself. Nothing is uploaded when you make it, and nothing is stored about your students when they use it. Their scores stay on their own device unless they send them to you.

Rhythm dictation

Tick Hide the notes before you copy the link. Your students then hear the rhythm without seeing it, tap back what they heard, and get their score. Only after that first attempt do the notes appear, with every missed or misplaced note marked. It is the same exercise as a dictation on paper, with the marking done for you.

Projector mode for the classroom

Every lesson, rhythm page and shared link has a projector key . It fills the screen with large notation, one exercise at a time. Use the arrow keys to move between exercises, Enter to play one and Space to start clapping.

To let the whole class clap at once, turn on the microphone. The detector listens for sharp sounds and ignores a second sound within about 70 milliseconds of the first, so claps that land together count as one. A ragged class shows up as extra or late claps, which is useful to see in itself. Keep the speakers away from the microphone, or the click can be heard as a clap.

Counting and Kodály syllables

Switch Count to Numbers to show the counting under every note: 1 e & a in simple meters, 1 trip let for triplets and 1 la li in 6/8. Switch it to Kodály to show ta, ti-ti, tika-tika, tri-o-la and syn-co-pa instead. The choice is remembered on that device, and it works in the main tool, the lessons and shared links.

Ready-made exercises

• Ten free rhythm reading lessons, from quarter notes and rests to 6/8, each with four or five scored exercises and a table of counts and syllables.
• Flamenco compás and Latin American rhythms: soleá, bulerías, son clave, bossa nova and more, with a click that accents the right counts.
• A metronome and a tap tempo page for ensemble work.

Drum pads, keyboards and e-drums

Switch on MIDI and every note-on from a MIDI pad, keyboard or electronic drum kit counts as a clap, with less delay than a microphone. It is free and works in Chrome, Edge and Firefox. Safari, iPhones and iPads do not support MIDI in the browser. Bluetooth MIDI devices work once they are paired with the computer.

Getting fair scores

Every device adds its own delay: keyboards, touch screens, Bluetooth headphones and microphones. If a student is late on every single note, they should calibrate once in the main tool (Pulse, Options, Calibrate). It takes twelve taps and is remembered on that device. Headphones help when clapping into a microphone, so the click stays out of it.

Questions and ideas

If you use Claptoscore with a class and something is missing, write to edejong@fastmail.fm.