# A music theory workbook — method pages written for your own students Recipe No. 19, Teaching and courses. From The know.sh Cookbook: https://know.sh/cookbook/music-workbook - For: a private piano teacher with twenty students across five levels - You bring: your own teaching notes, the order you teach concepts in, the pieces each level plays, and the questions students ask every year - You get: a theory workbook in five levels, a page per concept in your own words, a read-only link per level for families, and quizzes that show you what to teach next - Time: an evening per level, then a few minutes after lessons to note what to change - Keep it: private while you work; share one document by a read-only link Most piano teachers teach from a published method and end up writing around it: the page that explains key signatures the way your students actually understand them, the interval game you invent at every lesson, the note to parents about what to listen for in practice. Those pages end up as loose sheets in twenty folders, each version slightly different. This recipe gathers them once, as a workbook in five levels. Your assistant, whether Claude, ChatGPT or a local model, turns your teaching notes into a document per level and a finding per concept — *Steps and skips*, *Major and minor thirds*, *Key signatures with sharps* — and checks every interval it finds. You write each page into your own words in the editor. Families read their child's level from one read-only link, and quizzes on intervals and key signatures that you take yourself and then ask aloud at lessons show you what a student misses and what to teach next. know.sh has no music notation and no audio. Notes are written by letter name and finger number, sounds are described in words, and the scores stay in the student's books and your notation software. ## What you will use - **Shelf**: One shelf, *Piano theory workbook*, with a line on the ages and stages each level suits. - **Research document**: One document per level; the overview says what a student can do on arriving and by the end. - **Finding**: One finding per concept, in the same four parts, filed as *Observation*; the concepts a level rests on marked **Key**. - **Your AI assistant**: Lays out each level from your notes, checks every interval and key signature, and writes the quizzes you use to plan lessons. - **The editor**: Where each page becomes yours: the explanations in your words, exercises you trust, the order you teach. - **Proposed notes**: Notes your assistant proposes where an interval is miscounted or a key signature is wrong, for you to accept or dismiss. - **Quiz**: Questions on intervals and key signatures that you take first, then ask aloud at the keyboard. - **Public link**: A read-only link per level for families, with your teaching notes left out. ## Method ### 1. Set out the levels Decide the five levels before anything is built, from *Level 1 — Finding your way round the keyboard* to *Level 5 — Minor keys and the circle of fifths*, and for each, what a student can do on arriving and by the end: "By the end of Level 2 you can name every white key, play the C, G and F major five-finger patterns hands together, and hear the difference between a major and a minor third." Order the levels the way you teach, not the way any published method does. That order is the one thing a workbook of your own gives you that a bought one cannot. ### 2. Have your assistant lay out a level from your notes Give your assistant your notes for a level — typed notes, a photo of your lesson notebook in Claude or ChatGPT, or a file a local client can read — and ask it to create the *Piano theory workbook* shelf and the level's document, with one finding per concept and the same four parts under each: - **The idea**, in two or three sentences a ten-year-old can follow. - **At the keyboard**: what to play, by letter name and finger number. - **Exercises**: three or four short ones, written out. - **For families**: what to listen for at home, and what to leave alone. Ask it to work only from your notes, never from a published method book, and to title each concept by its name, *Major and minor thirds*, not "Lesson 7". ### 3. Write the pages into your own words Press **Edit** and go through the level at the piano. Rewrite each explanation the way you say it at lessons, cut exercises you would not set, and drag concepts into your teaching order. Mark the ones the level rests on as **Key**. There is no notation in know.sh, so write what you would say. Notes go by letter name: "C–E–G, starting on middle C". Fingers go by number and hand: "RH 1–3–5". Intervals are counted out in half steps: "C to E is four half steps, C♯, D, D♯, E. That is a major third." For anything that needs a staff, point to the page: "Play the first line of the *Minuet in G* in your book, page 12." The workbook explains; the book shows. **Look up** (⌘K) then finds a concept by name, and a search for "D major" turns up every page that uses the key. ### 4. Have your assistant check the theory Theory has right answers, and a wrong one on a page reaches twenty students. Ask your assistant to read the level and check every interval, key signature and scale it names, filing anything that looks wrong as a finding, *Theory checks*, without changing the pages. It can also leave a proposed note on the line in question, with **Accept** and **Dismiss** under it. Check every item at the keyboard before you act on it. An assistant is good at counting half steps and poor at knowing what you meant, so even a wrong flag is useful: it shows you a sentence that can be read two ways. ### 5. Quiz yourself, then ask the questions at lessons Ask your assistant for a quiz on *Level 2 — Five-finger patterns and first intervals*. It writes five to ten questions with know.sh's quiz tools — naming intervals, counting sharps and flats — each citing the concept it came from; the typed-answer kind suits "How many sharps are in D major?". Take it yourself in know.sh, to see that the pages support every answer. Students do not take quizzes in know.sh; the quizzes stay with you. Ask the same questions aloud at the start of a lesson, at the keyboard, and what a student misses decides the page you turn to next. Keep notes on each student in your lesson notebook, not in the workbook. ### 6. Give each family a link to their level When a level is ready, press **Share**, leave it with no expiry (the default), and copy the link the moment it appears; it is shown once. From each finding's own page, leave out anything that is only for you, such as *Teaching notes for Level 2* and *Theory checks*. Add a password if you would rather the pages stayed among your families, and give it to them at a lesson. Families read the level on a phone at the piano: the overview, then each concept with its part for them. They cannot reply through the link; questions come at pick-up or by email. When a student moves up a level, send the next link. ### 7. Revise between terms After lessons, leave yourself a note beside the concept that did not land: "Three students this week heard the minor third as wrong, not darker. Start with the opening of *Greensleeves*." Notes are private and stay beside the passage they are about. At the end of term, rewrite the pages your notes point to. The revisions keep the old wording, marked as yours or the assistant's, and every family's link shows the new page as soon as you save. ## Prompts to try Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, make a shelf called “Piano theory workbook” and a document on it called “Level 2 — Five-finger patterns and first intervals” from my teaching notes, attached. Add one finding per concept in the order of my notes, each with four parts: The idea, At the keyboard (letter names and finger numbers), Exercises, and For families. Work only from my notes, not from any published method book, and file each concept as an Observation. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, read “Level 3 — Key signatures and the major scales” on my Piano theory workbook shelf. Check every key signature, scale and interval it names, counting half steps where that helps. File anything wrong or unclear as a new finding in that document called “Theory checks”, quoting the line and giving the finding number, and do not change the pages. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, make a quiz on “Level 2 — Five-finger patterns and first intervals” on my Piano theory workbook shelf with eight questions: four on naming intervals up to a fifth from a given note, two typed-answer questions on how many half steps an interval has, and two true-or-false questions on major and minor thirds. Use only notes from the C, G and F five-finger patterns, and cite the concept each question comes from. ## Variations - Teaching guitar, violin or voice? The same shape works: letter names, and fingerings or positions in words, with the scores in the student’s book. - Preparing students for graded theory exams? Keep a document per grade that follows the exam board’s published syllabus in your own words, and never give past papers to an assistant. - Homeschooling families can take a level as the music unit of their year; see the [homeschool year](/cookbook/homeschool-year). - For an adult student who wants to read ahead, make a *Read me first* document listing the links to two levels, and share that one. ## Where it falls short - There is no music notation, no staff, no audio and no upload of scores or recordings. Anything that must be seen or heard stays in the student’s books, your notation software or your recordings. - Students cannot take quizzes, and quizzes cannot be shared. You take them and ask the questions aloud. - Families read; they cannot reply or leave notes on a link. Questions come at lessons or by email. - Links are one level each, so a family with two children at different levels gets two links. - Smaller local models call tools less reliably and can miscount too; check what any assistant files, and Revisions shows every change. ## A note on method books, pieces and your students Published method books, theory workbooks and sheet music are protected by copyright, and so are most song lyrics. Keep every explanation and exercise in your own words, refer to pieces by title and page in the student's own book, and do not type out, photograph for your assistant or have it reproduce a method book's pages, its exercises or its music. A piece long in the public domain can be named and described freely, though a particular modern edition of it may still be protected. The workbook is about theory, not about students. Keep students' names, progress and recordings out of know.sh, out of your assistant and off every link; a family's link shows the level, never the child. Assistants make mistakes about theory, so check every interval and key signature at the keyboard. Indexed under: Music theory, Intervals, Key signatures, Piano teaching, Letter names, Method books.