Flat Thirteen

Mission

Flat Thirteen's mission is to make music education accessible to the widest possible audience by leveraging the principles of game design to attract and engage students on the most universal platform, the web. The goal is to develop a library of games that are playable by students of any musical background or training, building the understanding and skills needed by any musician, independent of any particular instrument.

Most music teachers focus on teaching particular instruments, providing just enough music theory to get through their lessons and help their students play prepared pieces. We want to complement that with development of ear training, composition, and arrangement, and the opportunity to create their own accompaniment.

When music is offered in elementary schools, it is typically one-size-fits-all; unable to address the wide variety of musical backgrounds of the students, from those who have had zero musical exposure to those who have already been playing instruments for years. We want to make it possible to offer music in the classroom while allowing each student to engage at the right level for their needs, and create their own music that they can share with their friends and family, without requiring the administration of specialized music instructors. (Though if budgets allow for it, having special musical instructors would be even better!)

What makes us Different

While there are plenty of music making apps out there trying to reach a broader audience by making it easy to make pleasing sounds without having to understand the musical theory, we believe it is better to be the guiding path towards learning music theory while making music.

While most music making apps try to look pretty while doing as much as possible, we believe it is more important to start simple, only providing a handful of tools at a time until understanding is achieved before unlocking more and more powerful tools.

The tools for making music are more accessible and powerful than ever before, yet there is a huge gap between those tools and musical education as it exists today. We want to bridge that gap, and create more musicians making more music in the world.

Behind the Scenes

Flat Thirteen is the brainchild of Stanley Chen, leveraging his background as both an experienced software engineer and a trained musician, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, while also pulling from past training and experience in UX, animation, and music education and studies in game design and sound design.

Flat Thirteen is built on Vue/Nuxt, and uses Tone.js for handling all WebAudio. All sounds are synthesized on the client; no samples are used. The game is designed to work at any resolution and is touch screen friendly, though browser support of WebAudio is not universally awesome. The source code is currently free to peruse on GitHub.