Free Online Ear Training
Ear Training
Learn to play any simple melody by ear by training with this easy to use ear trainer. No prior knowledge of ear training is required, just watch the quick tutorial directly below the program to understand the basics behind playing by ear or see my picture based guide if you just want to learn to use the program. This program is unique because it helps associate intervals to common songs, which is the fastest way to learn.
The ear trainer program is right above this text. If you don't see it please wait for it to load, it's only 282k. If you still don't see it or it doesn't look right try updating your flash version. You can also click here for full screen. You may be using an older cached version so click refresh every few days for possible updates.
Video Tutorial: Understanding ear training and using the program
The first part explains the concept behind playing songs by ear, the second part explains how to use the program. If you want just the part that explains the program go here. If vimeo is down here's the youtube mirror.
Reference to Songs
Here's links to some of the less universally known songs my program references. The interval doesn't always start exactly at the beginning of the song but I've tried to make it as obvious as possible. As you can tell many of these are my own random video game song associations. Choose songs that you personally know well or you feel are catchy enough to easily associate.
| Song Name | Interval | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Beatles: Yesterday | M2 Descending | Youtube |
| Beatles: Hey Jude | m3 Descending | Youtube |
| Guy Beart: L'eau vive | M3 Descending | Youtube |
| Low Rider | m3 Ascending | Youtube |
| Chrono Cross: Galdove | m3 Descending | Youtube |
| Cat Stevens: Morning has Broken | M3 Ascending | Youtube |
| Xenogears: Valley where... | m3 Ascending | Youtube |
| Swing Low, Sweet Chariot | M3 Descending | Youtube |
| West Side Story: Maria | Tritone Ascending | Youtube |
| Megaman 2. Dr. Wiley's Castle | Tritone Ascending | Youtube |
| Chrono Cross: (Blah, generic) | Tritone Ascending | Youtube |
| Blue Seven | Tritone Descending | Youtube |
| Saga Frontier 2: Thema | Perfect Fifth | Youtube |
| Bach: Little Fugue | Perfect Fifth | Youtube |
| Back to The Future Theme | Perfect Fifth | Youtube |
| Saga Frontier: Asellus | m6 Ascending | Youtube |
| Morning of the Carnival | m6 Ascending | Youtube |
| Chopin Nocturne Op.9 No.2 | M6 Ascending | Youtube |
| Chrono Cross: Home Arni (aruni?) | M6 Ascending | Youtube |
| 1942: Vangelis | m6 Ascending | Youtube |
| Super Mario World Theme | M6 Ascending | Youtube |
| FF7 Tifa's Theme | M6 Ascending | Piano, Guitar |
| Phantom.. Opera: Music of the Night | M6 Descending | Youtube |
| Il etait un petit navire | M6 Descending | Youtube |
| Maman les petits bateaux | m7 Ascending | Youtube |
| Star Trek | m7 Ascending | Youtube |
| Pure Imagination | M7 Ascending | Youtube |
| Superman | M7 Ascending | Youtube |
| Bali Ha'i | M7 Ascending | Youtube |
| FF7 Vincent's theme | M7 Ascending | Youtube, Original |
| FF3 Celes | M7 Descending | Midi, YT, Piano |
| Nada Surf: Popular | M7 Ascending | Youtube |
| Zanarkand | 8 Descending | Youtube |
Songs not in the program
These songs can also be associated with the interval, but due to limitations of the program, it's hard to make the song association seem obvious.
| Song Name | Interval | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Interval Song - Django Bates | All of them (lol) | Youtube |
| Another Interval song | * | Youtube |
| Bulls on Parade | Octave Descending | Youtube |
| Doogie Howser MD Theme | Octave Descending | Youtube |
| YYZ | Tritone Descending | Youtube |
| ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA | Perfect Fifth | Youtube |
| Jaws Theme | m2 Ascending | Youtube |
| Take me On | M7 Ascending | Youtube |
More Song Associations
See the articles in Wikipedia: Ear Training - Interval Recognition, Wikibooks: Scales and Intervals - Mnemonic Memorization Examples, Virginia Commonwealth Univeristy, Earmaster forums.
Why ear training with this program is useful
With a few weeks practice spending only a few minutes a day, you should be able play simple melodies by ear on any instrument you know how to play. Vocalists can benefit too by improving their accuracy and sight singing capabilities.
Isn't guessing and checking faster than thinking in intervals?
Some argue that guessing and checking over and over on a song is a much faster way to get the song's notes than thinking in intervals. This is very true for them, because they're slow and bad at intervals. Train until you master it and it'll be like comparing a 4 year old reading to a 30 year old. Guess and check is still a form of interval identification practice, but you'll get better much faster with my ear trainer because it's done in a very coordinated and efficient way. You can visualize and understand your mistakes and customize your way to mastering it rather than rely on how often certain intervals occur on the song you chose.
Is associating a song bad thing in the long run?
Absolutely not. Even when you've mastered intervals 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 does not damage your ability for identification at all. Associating a song especially helps when you need to sing or recreate the sound in your head.
Why this program is unique
The best way to learn to play songs by ear is associate songs to musical intervals. Intervals are just the distances between notes when two notes are played. When you miss a question, instead of just telling you you're wrong the program will play a song associated with the correct interval starting at the questions pitch. This program has many common songs built-in and you can further personalize it by adding your own songs.
Changelog
Click refresh on your browser to update the program. The browser "caches" it so it doesn't have to load it up every visit, but to see recent updates you'll need to refresh the page or clear the browser's cache.
(12/31/08)
Added a way to configure the timeout between question and answer in listen mode as well as an option to set how many notes are played in song mode. I've also added an option to delete all songs so you can test yourself without the song playback on miss. The quick keys have now been updated to work with song mode.
(12/30/08)
I really need to make another video tutorial about all this mess. Fixed the issue with listen mode, I think. Fixed other minor bugs. I added a splash page with a level selection. This way I tell beginners to focus just on the play and answer choices buttons so as not to get overwhelmed by the layout at first glance. It also notes that a new question is played automatically when you answer correctly, which seems to confuse people sometimes. Most people that pass by the page are complete beginners so it's no use giving them all 12 possible answer choices as default. If I ever make this thing multilingual the lanuage setup will also be on the splash page.
(12/29/08)
Added different modes in the "Direction" drop down box (where ascending / decending are): Song Mode, Listen Mode, Perfect Pitch, 3 note breakdown. I added some more songs, most notably some decent ones for decending minor/major seventh. I also switched the defaults for descending/ascending tritone, ascending fifth, and ascending minor seventh.
Advancing to the next question after missing the note required clicking the correct answer. Clicking play would skip the question and go to another. Many people emailed me saying my program was glitched because it doesn't count the questions wrong, despite this being in the manual, but hey who would bother reading that? The play button now counts the question wrong if you missed it and additionally all skipped questions are recorded in the "Total:" part of the statistics section.
Song Mode
Song mode will start playing six notes random based on the intervals you have enabled randomized between ascending and descending. You can try to play the song by ear using the piano or the interval buttons. If you miss the next note the song will be replayed and you start from the beginning.
Listen Mode
This will play an interval, give a short pause, then play the associated song, repeating randomly through the enabled intervals and the selected direction. You can change to any in the direction drop down while it's playing, eg select harmonic or random. To stop it, select stop listen mode in the direction drop down. This for passively associating intervals to songs eg. while working / studying. All of those marketing tapes with a pitch similar to "learn x language while you sleep just playing our disks" are completely fake, however focus can be given to the program off and on and studying the few minutes before sleep often help most. This forces a constant pace but takes away any stress of being wrong and trying to maintain a decent score.
3 note breakdown
Random experimental feature. Multiple notes at the same time can be complicated to break down. After you've mastered harmonic style give this a try and see how often you're right.
Perfect pitch
Why not? The pianos already and all the structures were in place so it was easy to implement. It's not all that useful though as there's no way to limit / track stats. It plays a tone, you try to find it on the piano. If you're wrong it'll show you the correct answer. If you're right it will give you the green circle. Click play for another question.
Note About Development
I tried to keep things dynamic and cleanup as best as possible, unfortunately the code is too messy now. This is my first project in ActionScript 3 so I learned a lot of things in the process and regretted some of my previous implementations. Also as I added features many were added months later in quick-fix style, further stacking the mess. I won't add anything else until I rewrite / restructure it. Fixing bugs and adding songs are the exception.
(11/26/08)
Fixed it so if you're using randomize, clicking repeat won't randomize the direction again. Fixed red dot issue you select an answer outside the visualization range. Added more songs. Thanks to Nicholas D, Dennis Carlstrom, Stuart Nisted and Tom Gaston for the song suggestions. If I left you out or you don't want to be listed let me know.
(8/17/08)
GUI and responsiveness improved.
(8/16/08)
Uber update released. Rewrote sequencing engine and added piano and guitar instruments. I added a little piano so you can visualize and even enter in answer by playing the notes. It adds a green dot for the current location, red for you incorrect answer and blue for the correct answer. You can disable the blue dot by disabling feedback in options. I added text on top of a lot of stuff so people don't get too overwhelmed at first look.
(8/13/08)
Some people had trouble hearing the low notes so I've increased the bottom octave's amplitude by 40% and set the default audio volume setting to 100%. I decreased the volume of the highest notes. I added a feature in options to anchor the first note of the interval. I added a few more songs. Descending notes will now start a few notes higher to avoid a cutoff frequency range some speakers have.
(8/11/08)
More songs. Small fix in quick keys and in statistics if users click play after missing note. To avoid confusion ascending is now the default interval setting. The label of ascending songs and descending songs was placed in the songs section. Removed Disney: someday prince will come. Corrected Swing Low name. Added song references to this page.
(8/10/08)
Thanks to Michael Braz for correcting me and saying Hey Jude is a minor 3rd. The song was misplaced in the wrong group (major 3rd decending). I also fixed the timing on thema, the cradle song and added FF7 Vincents theme to M7.
Report bugs or give feedback
Notice any bugs or inaccuracies? Want to suggest something? Do you want to see a popular song that you associate with a particular interval added to the list? Do you know the names of the "??" songs? Contact me at JimmyRuska@gmail.com
Note that some songs are difficult to add like: YYZ for descending triton, Bulls On Parade for descending octave, jaws theme for ascending minor second. They all just repeat the interval over and over. With limited rhythm support, my program just can't convey the song well to make it easily recognizable in such cases.
Possible Future Updates
Check back every couple of weeks to see progress. There's no guarantee when or if any of the below features will be added, but these are the most likely to be implemented at some point. How often the program is worked on depends on: my free time, how many people show interest in the program or a particular feature, how complicated the feature is to add.
- More associated songs... if you email me names =P
- Add a "Song" mode that plays 6 or so randomized notes when clicking play. Then you have to play the melody by ear.
- Integrate a chord ear trainer
- Better timing support for adding / editing songs. Add harmonic support, rests, and support for floating point numbers.
- Add the new anchor / instrument settings to the import / export save feature. Also reset the volume and speed x,y location for the sliders on export.
- An option to make the piano play the associated song if you hit the wrong note (instead of just playing the tone).
- Add a music staff for visualization. Possibly make it so you can enter answers there too.
- Correct the repeat button for when the direction is randomized.
- Fix red dot location on visualization when wrong answer is outside of range.
- Fix the "clicking" sound that happens when playings songs.
- Video tutorial about editing songs.
- For Blog: Review more ear trainers. Tell you how to get notes from mp3s using free software. Tell you how to get sheet music using midis.
- Another flash app for rhythm identification
- Visualization for guitar? Probably not in a long time. It gets pretty complicated coding it.
- Multilingual
Technical Description and Details
This program was created with Flash CS3 in ActionScript 3. The notes are composed of 36 prerecorded perfect sine waves generated in audacity at half amplitude. The point of using simple tones instead of lets say, a piano's pre-recorded notes is so musicians can focus on just the quality of the intervals without the possibility of a complex timbre and possibly slightly out of tune notes interfering. ActionScript 3 has no support for standard midi, so no midi devices / drivers are required. The program can be used offline just by dragging and dropping it onto any web browser. It works on any operating system supporting flash.
License, Terms and Privacy
This is free software. It can be bundled, redistributed, downloaded and used infinitely by anyone for any reason. The video tutorial can also be translated or subtitled. The only thing you can't do is reverse engineer / decompile / edit it. This server does not record IP addresses and the program does not send personal information.
Intentions & Author statement
This is to help students associate songs to musical intervals. Interval identification is one of the foundations of ear training. Most students learn by associating intervals to songs in their head every time they miss question. My program automatically plays the associated song back if the interval is incorrectly identified making the association instantaneous, and in the exact pitch.
I wanted to make the most efficient ear trainer out there and make it tiny file size, OS independent, and usable from the browser.
Known Bugs
- If a song has a big range variation, the program may play only the first few notes and omit the others.
- The program has 3 octaves built in. The first note of the interval is always a randomized note in the second octave. If a song goes over an octave down or up it will be calling notes that don't exist in the program.
- If a question is missed you can click play for a new question and avoid your score being lowered.
- If I count it against them on the next correct answer it messes up the statistics as the next note you get correct counts as wrong and the incorrect association in blank. Doing something like disabling the play button can also annoy users genuinely wanting to skip the question.
Vocabulary
Note that the program's way of abbreviating isn't a standardized form.
| Name | Abbreviation | Distance Between Notes (Half steps) |
|---|---|---|
| Minor Second | m2 | 1 |
| Major Second | M2 | 2 |
| Minor Third | m3 | 3 |
| Major Third | M3 | 4 |
| Perfect Fourth | p4 | 5 |
| Tritone | Tri / Dim 5 / Aug 4 | 6 |
| Perfect Fifth | p5 | 7 |
| Minor Sixth | m6 | 8 |
| Major Sixth | M7 | 9 |
| Minor Seventh | m7 | 10 |
| Major Seventh | M7 | 11 |
| Octave | 8 | 12 |
Help!
See the picture guide.
Tags: ear training, eartraining, play songs by ear, free ear training software, music theory online, learn music theory, music theory, online education, ocw, interval song examples, song that starts with, minor, major, ascending, descending, interval recognition, interval song associations, memorize intervals free software, mnemonic memorization, memorize musical intervals
Posted on Thursday, August 7 2008
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