Like many students this time of year, my 7-year-old son has started learning a new musical instrument. His piano lessons emphasize confidence and noisemaking right now, but soon he will learn phrases like “Elephants get big dirty feet” for the notes on a musical stave and move on to more theory and instrument skills. For all the stages of his music education, there are many apps that can help.

For learning to sight-read music, an essential skill for a student of any instrument, there is an iOS app called Music Tutor Free (Sight Reading Improver). The app assumes you know the basics of identifying which note is which on the treble and bass clefs and are trying to cement this knowledge in your mind.

To help with that, the app lets you test yourself for periods of one to 10 minutes, during which you will be shown many notes written in musical script. You have to correctly identify a note from a list or on the keys of a digital piano keyboard. When you’re finished, the app shows a score of correct answers and accuracy percentages, and you can review individual questions where you got the answers wrong.

This app is well designed, with an easy-to-use interface and a minimalist look. It has some useful built-in explanations about musical notation, and it has an Apple Watch app extension. The app is free but includes ads — turning those off costs $2 via an in-app purchase.

On Android, a free app called Music Tutor Sight Read Lite is roughly equivalent to Music Tutor Free. It includes a gamelike sight-reading experience to help you learn musical notation and also assumes you have covered the basics of reading music with a music teacher, so it is more for consolidating learning than for teaching absolute beginners.

For a more basic piano learning experience, check out Piano Dust Buster by JoyTunes, which is free on iOS. This app can work via an on-screen digital piano keyboard or by listening to your real piano as you play. For beginners, there’s a section that teaches note names, rhythm and so on. The app can even help with the basics of reading musical notation.

For those who can already read music, the app has games based on playing well-known music, like a classical track from Beethoven or a pop song from Taylor Swift. It’s also gamelike, offering points as you play the right notes in time to a recording, and you can level up and earn medals. There is also a social angle in which you can play against other users around the world.

Piano Dust Buster’s design is highly graphical, though the colorful interface can take a bit of getting used to. The app also includes some good free content, and extra song packs can be purchased for a few dollars. There is also a subscription option with play-along lesson tracks, costing $10 a month.

On Android, the app Piano Teacher offers a piano-learning experience in which people can play along with classics and pop songs on an on-screen keyboard. The app can make sounds to emulate a harp, a guitar and other instruments as well as regular piano sounds, and users can record and share their performances. The app has a professional-looking interface with many levels of control over what you learn and what sounds you make. Piano Teacher is free, though you have to buy additional music packs in-app for $1 or more.

Lastly, a metronome can be a useful aid when learning rhythm, and there are plenty of app options here. Onyx Apps make a great iOS app called Metronome, for example. It has many features for keeping time and can even rhythmically flash on your iPhone to grab attention. The app is free, with a $2 upgrade offering precision timing control and other elements.

On Android, the ad-supported Metronome Beats app is free, has a clear interface and offers lots of control over how the app helps you stick to the beat.

Quick Call

Paper is an excellent notebook and sketching app that has, until now, been available only for iPads. Now the app has reached iPhones, and along with its many existing features for entering handwriting or typed text alongside drawings or photos, the app has gained interface improvements and fixes. Paper is free.