Duolingo opens waitlist for its new, free music course. Here’s how to sign up

Duolingo is known for being a language-learning app that makes the process fun and intuitive through gamified, free, bite-sized lessons. In early September, Duolingo announced it was expanding its learning platform to music and math learning. The company just made a new announcement that will let you join in on the fun. 

On Wednesday, at Duocon, Duolingo announced that users can now join an in-app waitlist if they are eager to try out the new music course before the broader rollout to all users in November. 

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When selected for the update, users will be alerted through an in-app notification. Users will then be able to find the added courses in the top left where users typically toggle between languages. Like any other course on Duolingo, there is no additional cost for the new music and math courses. 

The music course will allow users to learn to read and play music through its signature gamified learning experience. 

Duolingo’s new music course will include the same techniques it uses in its language-learning platform, with hundreds of bite-sized lessons, interactive exercises, and 200-plus “fun and familiar tunes,” according to an announcement. 

As seen by the images below, learning takes place through interactive exercises such as fill-in-blank and match the pairs, where users select the right note to match the sound.

Duolingo shares that more than 3.6 million students in the US don’t have access to music education. Duolingo’s free music course is meant to help make learning music more accessible, with professional lessons costing up to $400 per lesson. 

I have had the opportunity to go hands-on with the music-learning experience and can say I am a fan. If you are used to the regular Duolingo teaching style, the music course is extremely similar. 

The only major difference is that you have to turn your phone horizontally to complete the exercises and that your volume has to be on to listen to the tunes. 

I can’t speak to how effective the app is at teaching music since I am only a couple of exercises in, but I can vouch for how easy and fun the experience is. 

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In addition to adding music, the application will also begin including math lessons as part of an attempt to make Duolingo more of a multi-subject learning platform. 

The math lessons also align with Duolingo’s current learning layout, gamifying the learning experience with fun little exercises, such as selecting the right angle and dragging tiles to make a basic math operation.