About | Noteful

A FREE and fun way to learn to read music.

The free Noteful app provides you with a few minutes of daily practice in note reading, ear training, and music theory so you can understand all those dots on the page and have a better ear for the music you listen to and play. Our FRESH Theory approach divides topics into short, easy-to-understand lessons--a lot like playing a game--so you can make progress while having fun. The app is free to download and requires no subscription.

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Noteful in the News

November 2023. Noteful launch announced in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

June 2023. Our CEO Becky Billock shared her entreprenuerial journey with Shoutout DFW.

Our Mission

At Noteful we have a mission to make music literacy learning fun and engaging. Our aim is to bring quality music education and the magic of music to everyone! We believe that through our free app we can help individuals acquire the fundamental building blocks of music, thus providing new opportunities for a wide array of people interested in music.

Note reading and ear training are skills that enhance the musical experience and are absolutely essential in many settings where musicians collaborate. Often these skills are taught with workbooks or theory pages that can get lost, eaten by the dog, or taken hostage by aliens. But fear not, the Noteful is downloadable for free on your Android or iOS phone or tablet so that you can practice while on the bus, waiting for a meeting, or sitting on a bench in the park. Or you can use a computer, too.

The app is supported through advertising, as well as completely optional subscriptions. Subscribers enjoy unlimited hearts, as well as an ad-free experience, not to mention the awesome feeling of supporting the mission of free music education, and sharing the magic of music.

Team

Meet The Team

In addition to Ed, our trusty mascot, here's the other folks behind the scenes at Noteful.

Becky Billock

Our light bulb lady who usually thinks up all the crazy stuff you see on the Noteful app. She has taught piano lessons for over 30 years and devised this app in order to coerce her students to do their theory homework. (This is only partly a joke!) She has some fancy degrees in piano performance and spent a lot of years galavanting around the world playing for people. Now if she's not teaching, momming, or cooking up lessons for Noteful, you can find her hiking, editing videos, reading, creating computer animations, or selling things at the end of the driveway.

Jonathan Aldrich

Resident question answerer, programming mastermind, punching bag, and savior when anything goes wrong. He has a fancy job teaching computer science at a top university, where he does stuff like make up new languages that no one has ever heard of (for computers, of course!) He also plays a mean violin. When he's not advising students, or teaching home school physics and chemistry, you can find him running marathons, or finding things in the kitchen to ferment.

Jamie Quishenberry

Our mad hacker, the computer genius behind the scenes on the Noteful app. Jamie has the distinction of being both a computer and music nerd so is a natural addition to the Noteful team. She knows what's good and sticks close to the mountains, having spent her first couple decades in LA, and then setting up digs in the PNW. Jamie also likes reading and cooking yummy vegan food--that is, when those activities are allowed by the cat.

Paul Billock

Paul is the database guru on the Noteful

team--he has been wandering around in data structures for over 20 years. He has a fancy degree in geographic information systems (you guessed it--more databases!) and basically knows how to keep us all in line. Or rather... in columns and rows. In his off-work time
he takes on casual projects like building an entire manufacturing line for architectural tile or throwing a set of dishes (the guy is a brilliant ceramic artist), rides his bike a lot, or can be found in his shop tinkering with something or other.

Bradley Schmerl

Our magic code writer who (among other important tasks) makes the content of the Noteful app suddenly multiply like rabbits. He does computer science-y things at a fancy university for his day job. Mad hacker by day, mad hatter by night: in his off hours Bradley can be found curating his hat collection, as well as mixing cocktails or banging together

pieces of wood.

Jack Kurutz, member of IonSound chamber ensemble and Bell'Art Ensemble, music educator, recording artist

"This is SUPER! The layout is colorful and fun, not too crowded and the activities are greatly varied. This covers so many concepts all in one place, it’s a comprehensive theory workout plus ear training. Would really save lesson time and allow students to progress faster on all these skills, not to mention being able to set goals and keep track of progress! And the achievements are so important for kids (and adults), it’s like Duolingo for music!"