Free memory game — instant play, no signup, no download
Audio Tone Memory plays a short sequence of tones and asks you to reproduce it. Nothing is shown while the sequence plays — the information arrives entirely through your ears, which makes it markedly harder than the visual equivalent for most people. Sequences grow by one tone each time you get one right, so the game finds your ceiling within a couple of minutes.
Turn your sound on — the game is unplayable silently.
Press Start and listen to the tone sequence all the way through.
When the sequence finishes, tap the pads to reproduce it in order.
A correct reproduction adds one tone to the next sequence.
One wrong tone ends the run at the length you reached.
There are six tones, each on its own pad. The first round plays two tones; each round adds one to the end and replays the whole sequence, at a steady 0.6 seconds per tone.
The first wrong pad ends the run. Your score is the round you reached — round 5 means you reproduced six tones — and your best round is saved in this browser.
Auditory working memory — holding a sequence of sounds in order with nothing to look at. Most people's auditory span is shorter than their visual span, and the gap is usually a training gap rather than a hard limit. Another memory game to try next: Pattern Copy.
Remembering a sequence of pitches draws on auditory working memory, which behaves partly separately from memory for words and pictures. In a 1970 study, Diana Deutsch showed that remembering a tone was disrupted by hearing other tones in between, but hardly at all by hearing spoken numbers — evidence of a store specialised for pitch.
That is why this game can feel harder than a visual sequence of the same length: you cannot easily turn pitches into words to rehearse them, unless you give them names. Musicians tend to do better because they already have labels (intervals, scale degrees) for what they hear.
Hum the sequence back under your breath while it plays. A motor rehearsal holds longer than a purely mental one.
Treat it as a melody, not a list. Pitch contour — up, up, down — is much stickier than tone names.
Close your eyes during playback. Visual input competes for the same rehearsal loop.
Keep the reproduction tempo close to the playback tempo. Rushing scrambles the order more often than hesitating does.
No, but they help. Laptop speakers can blur adjacent pitches, which turns a memory test into a hearing test.
For most people, yes, by a tone or two. That gap is normal and it narrows with practice.
It usually does — musicians tend to start higher because they already encode pitch contours automatically. Non-musicians catch up more than they expect.
Try the visual sequence games instead — Color Sequence and Simon test the same span through sight.