Every child in Japan speaks Japanese. Every child in England speaks English. None of them started with the alphabet. First they listened for years, then they repeated, and only once they were talking freely did someone show them the letters.

The Japanese violinist Shinichi Suzuki asked the simple question that follows: so why do we teach music the other way round? We hand a child the notes before they've heard enough music. His answer became one of the most widespread methods of music teaching in the world.

The mother-tongue method

After the Second World War, Suzuki began teaching violin to young children in Matsumoto, Japan. His method rests on a few simple ideas. The child listens a lot before playing. Plays before reading notes. The parent attends every lesson and practises with the child at home. The steps are small, and the same piece is repeated until it becomes easy.

The first thing children learn in the Suzuki method isn't a melody but a rhythm. The first violin book opens with variations on "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", and their rhythms are often remembered with words, such as "Mis-sis-sip-pi stop stop". The child doesn't count eighth notes. They say a word and their hand follows.

The engineering side: the example first

Most programmers learn a new language the same way. We don't start with the specification. We run an example, copy it, change something small, and see what happens. We read the documentation once we already have a feel for how the language sounds. That's why good documentation starts with a working example, not with grammar.

The echo in this game is the same: first you hear how it sounds, then you do it, and only at the end do you see how it's written down.

The game: "The Echo"

The learning goal is to hear and repeat a short rhythm, and later to recognise it written down.

1. Listen. A character of your child's choosing taps a short rhythm on a drum, two to six beats, and says it in words: "Mis-sis-sip-pi, stop, stop".
2. Repeat. Your child taps the same on a large drum on the screen. Right after, the game plays both one after the other: the original and your child's tapping. Your child hears for themselves whether they sound the same. The game gives no grade.
3. You lead. The roles swap. Your child taps their own rhythm, and you or the character repeat it. This is where you'll laugh most, because children invent impossible rhythms.
4. See it. Only once the rhythm is easy by ear does it appear on the screen written in simple signs: a long dash for "stop" and short dots for "mis-sis-sip-pi". Ear first, reading second.

The best part is the third, and it's for two. Suzuki insisted the parent take part, and not just for the practice.

The prompt

Build a small game as a single self-contained HTML file, based on
Shinichi Suzuki's ideas: listening first, then repeating, reading
last. Language: English.

Sound: a drum generated with the Web Audio API, no external files.
A large round drum in the centre of the screen that sounds on tap.
Character: [child's choice].

Rhythms (in order, easy to harder), each with words:
- "boom, boom" (2 long)
- "mis-sis-sip-pi, stop, stop" (4 short, 2 long)
- "kit-ty, kit-ty, boom" and a few more like these

Four modes:
1. "Listen": the character taps the rhythm, and the words are shown
   and spoken with speechSynthesis.
2. "Repeat": the child taps on the drum. Record the timing of the
   taps. After a 1.5-second pause, play the original and then the
   child's version one after the other. No grade and no percentage
   comparison.
3. "You lead": the child taps their own rhythm, the game remembers
   it and the character repeats it. An "Again" button.
4. "See it": unlocks after the child has repeated a rhythm 3 times.
   The rhythm is shown in simple signs: a long dash for a long beat,
   a dot for a short beat, under the words.

Rules: no points, stars, timer, "right" or "wrong". Nothing is stored
after the game is closed.

Design: calm colours, a big drum, works on a phone, no ads and no
external requests.

One technical note. Wireless headphones add a delay to the sound, and the rhythm will sound off even when your child taps perfectly. Play through the phone's speaker.

Does music make children smarter?

We have to be honest here, because the promise comes up a lot. The 2017 meta-analysis by Giovanni Sala and Fernand Gobet gathered dozens of studies and found no convincing evidence that music training improves other skills such as maths, reading or intelligence. If you sign your child up for violin to raise their maths marks, you'll probably be disappointed.

There is something else, though, and it's more interesting. In 2010 Sebastian Kirschner and Michael Tomasello found that four-year-olds who made music together were afterwards more likely to help each other spontaneously than children who had played together without music. A shared rhythm brings people together. That's also why the third part of the game is for two.

So this game isn't about making your child smarter. It's about ten minutes of shared rhythm with you. If you need a reason, that one is enough.

Suzuki isn't one of the six in the book from the AI Learning Game Kit, but the kit does the same job for the part after the prompt: from a working game to an icon on the phone.

A child doesn't need notes to hear the music. They need someone to tap along with them.