Listening skills can be assessed. The music General Certificate in Secondary education (the main public examination for 16-year olds in England) requires students to notate melodic pitches: given a score which contains the melody with one or more bars missing, the candidates are asked to listen to the music and to notate the missing bars. (The rhythm of the missing notes is provided, above the stave.) My research aimed to help a group of students to do this better, by using computer technology. My research question was, ‘