Performances + Events
Want to learn the fundamentals of music while gaming? New England Conservatory has an app for that.
NADIA, conceived and designed by NEC faculty member Andrew Schartmann, is described in the App Store as “a music game that blends tactile puzzles with real listening skills.”
“It’s gamification for education,” Schartmann said. That is, the combination of high-quality educational materials with game elements.
“Traditional music programs treat topics like scales and chords as abstract entities disconnected from musical practice, nudging students to place theory in one drawer and music-making in another,” Schartmann explains in an overview of the app. “NADIA bridges that divide by creating an interactive musical playground of hands-on skills-building exercises. By emphasizing active learning, NADIA solidifies concepts covered in NEC’s theory program at the Prep level and provides an entertaining and efficient review of essential materials for NEC’s college placement exams.”
NADIA, whose namesake is the influential composer and pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, engages users with puzzles that cleverly marry musical elements such as meter and rhythm with smart-phone mechanics like tapping and sliding.
“Combining musical tasks with puzzle-solving skills,” Schartmann said, “was the most interesting — and challenging — part of the app-building process.”
The app’s primary audience is teenagers — from students at the pre-college/Prep level to those in their first year of college.
“The game is tricky,” Schartmann said. “One has to have a certain level of cognitive maturity to engage with it meaningfully.”
It was important to Schartmann for the app to be accessible for young musicians who don’t read music. “Most musicians,” he pointed out, “don’t read music. You don’t need a (music) staff to teach fundamentals.”
NADIA was built in partnership with Construct Education (Online Education Services), with coding and graphic design support from Methodlab. The coding and design process took two years, Schartmann said. The first testing group was a cohort of NEC Prep students. Schartmann wanted first and foremost to know: “What were the learning outcomes and did the students enjoy it?” The beta version, which is currently available in the App Store, was also tested by students in Schartmann’s theory classes, who helped identify bugs in the functionality.
NADIA was born of a Collaboration Challenge that was initiated at NEC in fall 2019 as part of a strategic-planning process early in NEC President Andrea Kalyn’s tenure. The Collaboration Challenge sought to “unleash the creativity of NEC” in part through projects and partnerships designed to “incorporate educational technology into the curriculum.”
“NADIA reflects NEC’s commitment to transforming music education through imagination and innovation,” Kalyn said. “By investing in our faculty’s vision, creativity, and expertise, we’re expanding access to learning and broadening the scope of what’s possible for future generations of musicians.”
NADIA’s design called on Schartmann’s experience in music, gaming, and the coding that brings the latter to life. Schartmann grew up playing video games, and his father’s work as an electrical engineer inspired his early interest in technology.
Schartmann has explored video-game music in scholarly publications and in the NEC classroom. His technological expertise yielded Beethoven: A Multisensory Experience, an interactive exhibit he created and that was introduced at the launch of NEC’s Campaign for the Future of Music Education in September 2025. The exhibit was hosted in February and April by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall.
“Modern technology offers unprecedented opportunities to enhance learning,” Schartmann said. “Educational gaming, in particular, seems to be a burgeoning field, and we have an opportunity at NEC to help shape how these tools are designed and how they are ultimately used in music education.”
As much as NADIA was created for learning, it was designed to make that process fun. Users are not just absorbing information, Schartmann said. “They’re also trying to beat the game.”
