Ear Training and Music Theory Software

Learn to play any simple melody by ear with my Free Ear Training software below. Updated January/11/15 See changelog and todo list Videos: 1. Learn how playing by ear works. 2. How to use the ear trainer and apply it. 3. How the statistics section works

I can already pickout a song's notes by ear

Can you do it in near real time with few mistakes? Even if you can, try the song mode option. Picking out a song slowly by guess and check isn't what we're talking about here. Being able to replicate a given note by whistling or singing it back is not perfect pitch or relative pitch. I'm not sure why but there's a lot of confusion about this.

The best way to play by ear is to practice playing by ear

While practicing picking out the notes of your favorite songs is a great way to practice, mastering intervals gives the ability to double check the answer in your head allowing confidence when selecting the next note. With this program you directly see which intervals you need practice on and practice them more frequently. The detailed statistics it provides will guide you to what you need to train most. Practicing only using random songs you like will get you better but not in the very targetted way you will improve by using my program. It makes it extremely easy to isolate what you need improvement in and lets you target ascending/descending or harmonic, any set of intervals. I do recommend practicing picking out random songs but I recommend mastering your intervals with my program first, afterwards try the 'song mode' feature and 'previous note reference'.

Is associating a song bad thing in the long run?

Absolutely not. Even when you've mastered intervals without song associations it's impossible to avoid having a song, or many songs, come to mind that are related to the chord or interval being heard. This is perfectly a natural thing does not damage your ability for identification at all. Think about school, we learned A is for apple and B is for Bee, with those associations literally wallpapered sometimes to the first grade classroom walls. I learned A is for apple but I don't have to think of A is for apple every time I see the letter A in a word, which is what some people have tried to suggest. Learning to read takes time even after you get associations for every letter, and of course for some you may not really need to make an association. I was someone who couldn't learn certain intervals until I finally associated a song to them. It's actually very common. That's why I made this program, and yes, I don't have to think of the song now every time I hear or recreate the interval.

Posted on Thursday, August 7 2008

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