FAQs

What’s a “good ear”?
What are “Golden Ears”?
What does it mean to have a good ear for music?
Who has good ears for music?
What is a musical ear?

Different musicians and music educators will have different answers to this question, but here at Easy Ear Training we believe it boils down to two core abilities:

A. Hearing accurately

• Being highly aware of the sounds your ear senses.
• Hearing detail where others might just hear a “blur” of sound.
• Hearing in depth, being able to pick apart and uncover layers in the overall sound.
• Judging details such as pitches and timbre reliably

B. Understanding what you hear

This is about classifying the sounds you hear: mapping them onto useful, meaningful concepts.

• Knowing the names for what you hear – the exact terminology doesn’t matter, but having clear, unique identifiers does.
• Knowing the underlying music theory gives your brain the mental frameworks to construct useful models of what you’re hearing.
• Understanding why composers, performers and engineers make the choices they do in writing, playing and producing music.

People who have developed their ear to do both of these things often seem like a “natural”, when in fact there was considerable hard work and ear training involved!

In the audio world people with particularly sensitive ears, and the ability to understand and act on what they hear in great detail, are often referred to as having “Golden Ears”!

Those still working on their development are sometimes called “silver ears” – or the most humble call themselves “brass ears”!

See also “How do I get good ears?”

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Why aren’t my ears better?
How do you get a musical ear?
How can I become naturally musical?
How can I hear more in music?
How do you become a good musician?

The short answer is: ear training.

Having a good ear for music means being able to hear accurately and understand what you’re hearing.

This takes a wide variety of forms, encompassing every aspect of music – including melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, audio quality, music production, effects, and more.

Here at EasyEarTraining.com we define “ear training” as “any activity you do to improve your aural skills” – and so the process of developing a good ear is: ear training!

This can be as relaxed and generally as listening to lots of music from different genres to develop your music appreciation, or highly specific rigorous exercises, targeting particular skills such as interval recognition.

Whichever area you focus on and whatever methods you choose, if you want a good ear for music you must spend time improving your aural skills with ear training.

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Our ear training albums and eBooks are special combination multimedia packages.

The albums are provided as MP3s with PDF booklets, and the eBooks are audio-enhanced PDF/EPUB documents.

Unfortunately Amazon, CDBaby, and other retailers cannot currently support this kind of product.

Rather than produce a less sophisticated product, we choose to sell directly through our website.

This also allows us to offer far better direct customer support than we could if we went through third-party retailers.

All our products come with a 100% 60-day money back guarantee, and payments are securely processed by world-leading payment provider, Clickbank, so it is just as easy and safe as ordering through a site such as Amazon.

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How do you work out chord progressions by ear?
How can I figure out chords by ear?
What chord comes next in a I-IV-V-vi progression?

Chord progressions are the basis of harmony in songs and there are many common or standard progressions that are useful to know.

(a “chord progression“ is simply a sequence of chords: one chord after another.)

Chord progressions are often thought about in terms of the chord roles in a particular key, rather than the exact chords played.

For example, we talk about a “1 4 5″ progression (or “I IV V“) rather than a “C F G” progression, because playing the chords with these scale degrees will produce the same characteristic sound in every key.

There are music theory rules for what chords can or should follow each other, and these are helpful to know because:

• it makes it quicker to work out the chords to a song by ear
• it helps you find appealing sounds when writing songs

However, the ultimate guide must always be your ear, and you can come up with some great music just by following your ear to choose which chord should come next.

Learn more about chord progressions.

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Why can’t I identify intervals by ear?
Why can’t I identify chords by ear?
I want to recognise intervals
How do you learn to hear chords?
How do you learn to hear intervals in music?
Why can some musicians just hear what the notes are?

Well you’re certainly not alone!

You might be surprised how many seemingly very capable musicians still struggle with this kind of aural skill.

One approach is to work on your sense of absolute pitch (“perfect pitch”) but most musicians will find it far more rewarding and musically effective to work on their sense of relative pitch.

For chords and intervals you might find our Pitch & Harmony series a good place to start.

Figuring out which chords are being played is a combination of:

1. Identifying the type of chord (e.g. major, minor, etc.)
2. Identifying the chord degree (e.g. tonic, IV chord, V chord, etc.)

For #1 we have a downloadable ear training practice pack which will help you recognise the basic chord types.

For #2 you can go a long way just by getting the hang of “3 chord songs” and “4 chord songs”.

When it comes to single notes and working out tunes by ear, the main thing is to just dive in and practice!

This kind of “melodic dictation” can be scary – but it doesn’t have to be!

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What’s interval recognition?
How does relative pitch work?

An interval is the distance in pitch between two notes.

Intervals are the building blocks of melody and harmony, and learning to recognise the different types of interval can help you understand harmony, transcribe melodies, and play by ear. It powers your sense of relative pitch, a fundamental musical ability.

Listen to an interval
(ascending major third, from C)

If one note is much higher than the other, the interval is big. If the notes are close to each other in pitch, the interval is small. Intervals can be measured in semitones (half notes) or tones (whole notes) and the different sizes of interval have different names:

See also:

• How can I learn to recognize intervals?
• Intervals Topic page

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How do you learn intervals?
What’s the best way to learn intervals?

Step One: Get up to speed on the basics

Make sure you understand what intervals are and what you want to achieve.

Step Two: Choose a method

There are three popular approaches: Reference songs, solfege, and the “Nike method”.

1. Reference Songs: Using tunes you know as examples of the intervals, this can be an easy way to get started learning intervals
2. Solfege: If you’re using solfege in your music education already, this is the best option. If not, consider trying it: it’s a powerful approach.
3. The “Nike Method”: i.e. Just Do It! Treating intervals in their pure form as an isolated pair of notes, this is the most popular approach.

Whichever method you choose, use ear training tools to help you along the way.

Step Three: Practice every day

Regular practice is essential if you want to improve quickly as a musician, and interval recognition is no exception!

Even if it’s just 10 minutes a day, make the effort to be consistent and set aside the time to learn intervals and you’ll find your ears get better faster.

Find out more in our guide: “How to Learn Intervals”.

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Why can’t I tell unison from octave intervals?
I’m sure that unison was actually an octave! (or vice-versa)

Harmonic unison and octave intervals are difficult to distinguish. It can be frustrating when taking a quiz, but it does reflect a real musical challenge.

The problem is that two notes an octave apart share the vast majority of the ‘overtones‘ from which they’re made. This means that if the two notes sound exactly together, you hear the combination almost as a single note with a slightly different timbre, rather than two distinct notes. This can make it very hard to distinguish it from a single note (unison).

People find this particularly hard with very high or very low notes (cases where the ear is generally able to hear less detail).

There are a couple of things you can do to help with these cases. First, you may find it really helps to use headphones – or if you already are, try a different pair. This can accentuate different frequencies in the notes and make it easier to tell when it’s unison or an octave.

The other option is to approach the harmonic case gradually, by using ascending and descending intervals but having the time between notes be very short. With our RelativePitch app you can set this in the app settings menu. This way the notes are separated enough to distinguish the two cases, but you mostly hear the two notes together, so your ear can tune into the harmonic effect.

Using the correction popup in RelativePitch to directly compare the two cases, or enabling anchor mode can also be useful to pin down the difference.

It can be frustrating when it seems like there’s just no difference between two cases, but with further practice and the tips above you should find you can gradually tune your ears into the subtle distinction!

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How to hear intervals when the notes are played simultaneously?
How can I practice intervals with both notes at once?

If you’ve mastered the ascending and descending forms of an interval but are having difficulty with the harmonic version (both notes at once) there are a number of things you can try:

1. Sing it back

Singing is probably the most powerful way to improve your harmonic hearing. Whether or not you’re a star singer, you should try singing out the notes of an interval after you hear it – this really helps your brain internalise the sound.

Here’s the step-by-step:

1. Play the harmonic interval (with your instrument, recording, or app!)
2. Listen closely and try to ‘pick apart’ the sound into its two notes
3. Sing back the two notes, one after the other

The reason this is so powerful is that it truly tests whether your ear is hearing both notes, or just their blend.

It’s a bit like how you can’t be sure you understand something until you try explaining it out loud to someone else! You may think you’re hearing two notes – but unless you can sing one and then the other, you may be fooling yourself…!

Practice singing back the two notes of harmonic intervals and you’ll find yourself improving rapidly.

If you’re training with the RelativePitch app, go to the app settings and increase the Training Mode ‘Time before announcing’. Then you can sing back each interval after it’s played.

You can also turn on ‘Repeats’ and the “Play melodic first” option, and increase the “delay before repeat”. This way, you’ll hear the harmonic interval, have a chance to sing its notes, and then hear the melodic version so you can check what you sang!

2. Approach the harmonic case gradually

Use melodic (i.e. ascending and descending) intervals but have the time between notes be very short.

• If you’re using an instrument like a piano, simply play one note slightly before the other.
• With our RelativePitch app you can set the time between notes in the app settings menu.

This way the notes are separated enough to distinguish the two cases, but you mostly hear the two notes together, so your ear can tune into the harmonic effect.

3. Listen in detail

Give yourself a chance to hear the rich sound of the harmonic interval. Use longer notes so you have time to listen closely. Also, wearing high quality headphones can help you hear more detail of the notes being played, and this can help you internalise the harmonic sound.

4. Try different instruments

The harmonic case may be easier for your ear to identify with some instruments than with others.

With RelativePitch, you can select various instruments – or even mix instruments, which is a particularly useful way to tune your ear for the harmonic case. The difference in timbres helps your ear to hear both notes, while the overall sound is the harmonic blend.

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Should I learn all the intervals at once?
How long should I spend on each interval type?
What’s a better way to train with RelativePitch? Complete each lesson fully before moving on, or complete the first difficulty of all the lessons first?

This really depends on how you personally progress as you learn intervals.

Learning to recognise intervals is quite a specific skill, but it gradually builds your overall relative pitch ability.

This means that there aren’t hard “dependencies” about what you should learn first or how you should build up your ability.

You can choose to build your skill:

• “Broadly”: learning all intervals a little bit
  or
• “Deeply”: really mastering each type of interval before introducing more to your training.

Generally, we would recommend focusing on a small number of intervals and really mastering those (ascending, descending, harmonic, use in real music, relationships with chords etc.) before introducing more. This builds a more robust sense of relative pitch and avoids overwhelm.

The RelativePitch app is intentionally designed to be flexible. You can complete a lesson fully before moving on, or focus on the easiest difficulty of all the lessons in turn. Most students find themselves doing a bit of both.

This means that you may, for example, get stuck on distinguishing perfect fourths and perfect fifths in their harmonic form, and have difficulty completing that lesson. But you can:

• Spend some time on the easier levels of later lessons
• Use Custom Mode to pinpoint particular configurations you struggle with
  or
• Try using other instrument sounds.

Then when you return to it later you’ll probably find you are able to complete that lesson more easily.

We recommend aiming to complete each lesson fully before moving on to the next – but be fairly relaxed about continuing on if you find yourself getting stuck!

You can always return later to complete the harder difficulty levels.

This is actually one of the most rewarding parts of ear training: the exercises you do may be very specific, but you find they pay off in many varied ways.

Much of the work you do on different listening skills turns out to be very complementary and build your overall musical ability!

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How can I connect intervals to real music?
I want to hear the intervals in music
How do you use interval recognition?
What’s the best interval ear training method?
How do I get better at hearing intervals in music?
How do you take that next step so ear training is more than a game to score accurate discombobulated “points” on isolated intervals?

One disadvantage of the interval songs and “Nike” method of interval learning is that you can get very good at recognising isolated intervals but still struggle to use that in your real musical life…

There are a few ways to progress past this and really integrate your interval skills with the rest of your musical life:

1. Actively practise using intervals for the musical tasks you want to accomplish.

For example, if you want to play melodies by ear using your interval skills, spend some time explicitly trying to use intervals to work out melodies by ear.

You can practice in a simple way just by sitting down, listening to a melody, and then trying to work out the notes by figuring out each interval in turn. It’s slightly laborious, but doing it bit-by-bit using intervals like this will gradually internalise that way of hearing and it will start to flow and come instinctively.

If you want to make things a bit easier on yourself you could use the “Step and a Half” iOS app which generates melodies and challenges you to work out the intervals used.

Actively, intentionally using intervals in this way is essential to really see benefit from them in practical skills like playing by ear or composing.

If you don’t do this, you will still naturally improve a bit (because your overall relative pitch is improving) but taking the time to “teach” your brain how to use intervals for these tasks is what will really help you progress.

2. Use solfege!

This is the big benefit of solfege: that it’s inherently intimately connected to the musical “meaning” of notes.

Because your scale degrees are defined based on the tonic, it gives you a very practical mental framework for hearing pitches and intervals, which connects directly to tasks like playing by ear.

It’s never too late to start learning solfege, and even learning the basics and spending a bit of time practising them will bring benefits.

Knowing solfege is also nicely complementary to the intervals-only method, so you can use whichever is most helpful for a given musical task.

3. Listen to intervals in real use.

Ideally, all ear training would be directly related to “real music”. Although there can be benefit in focused listening to intervals in isolation, once you want to start using your interval recognition skills you’ll need to practise hearing them in a musical context too.

The Unravelling Music albums teach with this innovative approach, and Introducing Intervals teaches all the most common intervals. It uses real musical tracks, so that from the outset you hear the intervals in use – rather than as isolated “abstract” notes.

Want to learn more?

"Learning Intervals" is the all-in-one guide to improving your relative pitch with interval recognition.

Learn More →

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Why can’t I identify intervals by ear?
Why can’t I identify chords by ear?
I want to recognise intervals
How do you learn to hear chords?
How do you learn to hear intervals in music?
Why can some musicians just hear what the notes are?

Well you’re certainly not alone!

You might be surprised how many seemingly very capable musicians still struggle with this kind of aural skill.

One approach is to work on your sense of absolute pitch (“perfect pitch”) but most musicians will find it far more rewarding and musically effective to work on their sense of relative pitch.

For chords and intervals you might find our Pitch & Harmony series a good place to start.

Figuring out which chords are being played is a combination of:

1. Identifying the type of chord (e.g. major, minor, etc.)
2. Identifying the chord degree (e.g. tonic, IV chord, V chord, etc.)

For #1 we have a downloadable ear training practice pack which will help you recognise the basic chord types.

For #2 you can go a long way just by getting the hang of “3 chord songs” and “4 chord songs”.

When it comes to single notes and working out tunes by ear, the main thing is to just dive in and practice!

This kind of “melodic dictation” can be scary – but it doesn’t have to be!

Permalink.

What is relative pitch?
What is absolute pitch?
What is perfect pitch?
Is perfect pitch the same as absolute pitch?
Do I have relative pitch or perfect pitch?

Relative Pitch is the ability to identify the pitch of notes relative to other notes you’ve heard.

For example, you might have a sense of a song’s tonic (resting) note and then be able to recognise the pitches in the melody using solfège.

Or you might use your interval recognition skills to judge the distances between notes and work out a tune that way.

The essential point is that you are identifying notes relative to other notes.

Absolute Pitch, often called ‘Perfect Pitch’, is the ability to identify notes without any point of reference.

For example, the musician who can tell you out of nowhere that a car’s horn is a “B♭”, or that the band is playing a song in a different key than the original recording.

It can also be used to work out tunes and play songs by ear, which is where the confusion between the two skills often arises: both skills can enable you to perform similar tasks with musical pitch.

It’s easy to remember the difference:

• Relative pitch is all about the relationships between notes relative to each other.
• Absolute pitch is about identifying notes, absolutely free of any other notes’ influence.

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What is tuning fork ear training?
How can I start learning absolute pitch?
How do you learn perfect pitch?
What’s a reference tone?

If you want to learn perfect pitch, a good practical way to start developing your sense of absolute pitch is to choose a single note to use as a reference pitch.

Pick a pitch you can easily refer to – like a Middle C if you’re often near a piano, or the A440 of a standard tuning fork (440Hz).

Then, frequently play this pitch through the course of each day.

After doing this for a while start trying to hear the pitch in your head and sing it before you play it. Check whether you were right.

The more you practice, the more reliable your ability to reproduce your reference pitch will become.

This kind of “tuning fork ear training” is a good first step towards developing absolute pitch.

Once you have one reference pitch internalised you can start adding to it with other pitches, and combining it with your sense of relative pitch to accomplish other musical tasks.

You’ll also find that this kind of focused listening and awareness of pitch and frequency improves your overall musical sensitivity and aural skills.

Read more about learning a reference pitch.

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How do you work out chord progressions by ear?
How can I figure out chords by ear?
What chord comes next in a I-IV-V-vi progression?

Chord progressions are the basis of harmony in songs and there are many common or standard progressions that are useful to know.

(a “chord progression“ is simply a sequence of chords: one chord after another.)

Chord progressions are often thought about in terms of the chord roles in a particular key, rather than the exact chords played.

For example, we talk about a “1 4 5″ progression (or “I IV V“) rather than a “C F G” progression, because playing the chords with these scale degrees will produce the same characteristic sound in every key.

There are music theory rules for what chords can or should follow each other, and these are helpful to know because:

• it makes it quicker to work out the chords to a song by ear
• it helps you find appealing sounds when writing songs

However, the ultimate guide must always be your ear, and you can come up with some great music just by following your ear to choose which chord should come next.

Learn more about chord progressions.

Permalink.

Why can’t I identify intervals by ear?
Why can’t I identify chords by ear?
I want to recognise intervals
How do you learn to hear chords?
How do you learn to hear intervals in music?
Why can some musicians just hear what the notes are?

Well you’re certainly not alone!

You might be surprised how many seemingly very capable musicians still struggle with this kind of aural skill.

One approach is to work on your sense of absolute pitch (“perfect pitch”) but most musicians will find it far more rewarding and musically effective to work on their sense of relative pitch.

For chords and intervals you might find our Pitch & Harmony series a good place to start.

Figuring out which chords are being played is a combination of:

1. Identifying the type of chord (e.g. major, minor, etc.)
2. Identifying the chord degree (e.g. tonic, IV chord, V chord, etc.)

For #1 we have a downloadable ear training practice pack which will help you recognise the basic chord types.

For #2 you can go a long way just by getting the hang of “3 chord songs” and “4 chord songs”.

When it comes to single notes and working out tunes by ear, the main thing is to just dive in and practice!

This kind of “melodic dictation” can be scary – but it doesn’t have to be!

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A chord progression (or just “progression”) is a sequence of chords played one after another.

If there are just two, it’s called a cadence rather than a progression.

There are particular common chord progressions which are used again and again in popular music, because certain chords work well together to create moods and a satisfying sense of progress in music. This leads to a large number of “3 chord songs” and “4 chord songs”.

Here are a few examples of what is probably the most popular chord progression – The “I-V-vi-IV” progression. It should sound familiar, it’s used in thousands of songs!

The 'I-V-vi-IV' in A

Same progression, different rhythm

Same progression, different key (C)

Same progression, different instrument (piano)

Can you hear the similarity of musical character, despite the rhythm, key and instrument changing?

Here’s a completely different progression to contrast:

A different chord progression

There are endless possible chord progressions so when composing or writing songs don’t be afraid to experiment and explore. Still, popular music often returns to the tried-and-true, and perhaps all you need is “four chords and the truth”!

See topic: Chord Progressions

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Why do rock songs use 4 chords?
Why do so many rock songs use the same four chords?
What are the four magic chords?
What are the most important chords?
What are the most popular chord progressions?
What’s the most common chord progression in pop music?
How can I play pop songs by ear?
How do you play songs by ear?

The most powerful concept in learning to play songs by ear is the “1 4 5 progression”, or the “3 chord song”.

This can also include “1 4 5 6″ (or “I IV V vi“) progressions and 4-chord songs.

In short:

Different keys, different arrangements, different styles – but the same progression!

Learn about this progression and playing songs by ear becomes much easier!

If you want to learn more about three chord songs we have an all-in-one specialist guide: “3-Chord Songs and the 4-Chord Trick”.

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How do you work out chord progressions by ear?
How can I figure out chords by ear?
What chord comes next in a I-IV-V-vi progression?

Chord progressions are the basis of harmony in songs and there are many common or standard progressions that are useful to know.

(a “chord progression“ is simply a sequence of chords: one chord after another.)

Chord progressions are often thought about in terms of the chord roles in a particular key, rather than the exact chords played.

For example, we talk about a “1 4 5″ progression (or “I IV V“) rather than a “C F G” progression, because playing the chords with these scale degrees will produce the same characteristic sound in every key.

There are music theory rules for what chords can or should follow each other, and these are helpful to know because:

• it makes it quicker to work out the chords to a song by ear
• it helps you find appealing sounds when writing songs

However, the ultimate guide must always be your ear, and you can come up with some great music just by following your ear to choose which chord should come next.

Learn more about chord progressions.

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Can someone who is tone deaf be a musician?
Is there such a thing as “tone deaf”?
What does it mean to be “tone deaf”?
Is there a point in learning music if I’m tone deaf?

First things first: you probably aren’t truly “tone deaf”!

Generally when people describe themselves (or others) as “tone deaf”, what they mean is “they can’t hear pitches well” or simply “they can’t sing in tune”.

Often this is assumed to be an inherent trait of a person, going hand-in-hand with whether they “are musical”. However, it is only a very tiny proportion of the population (about 4%ref) who actually have a clinical condition (amusia) preventing them from appreciating differences in pitch. You can take an online test here, here or here to see if you might have this clinical condition.

In the vast majority of cases, struggling to hear pitch or stay in tune actually boils down to lack of training. Most often, a bad childhood experience of music education (e.g. being told they “can’t sing”) leads to them not engaging with music learning, not practising, and simply assuming they “aren’t musical” forever more.

What a tragedy! And such an unnecessary one.

How to cure tone deafness

The truth is that (excepting the clinical cases above), anybody can improve their appreciation of pitch. For example, our RelativePitch app begins from the simplest exercise: “Are these two notes the same or different?” and we have yet to encounter somebody who cannot (with some concentration and practice) succeed at this challenge!

In fact, here are a few excerpts from our app reviews:

Not a musician! But, I am finding that I am not as tone deaf as I thought. Great learning tool!

NurseDanger, United States, 2009

Great for learning intervals. Finally I have my tone deaf wife telling the difference between unison and tone.

todala, United States, 2009

Great! This is an awesome program. I tried a cheaper app and it just moved too quickly. My ear is fairly tone deaf, so I need something with training wheels on it!

warriorsings, United States, 2010

Excellent. don’t go through life tone-deaf, people

Sarthanifleon, United States, 2009

Listen and Sing

Singing out of tune is often the prominent sign people take to indicate someone is “tone deaf” – but by developing some pitch appreciation (with relative pitch ear training) and doing some singing practice to connect the improved inner ear with vocal chord control, there is no reason these people cannot escape the unnecessary and unhelpful label of being “tone deaf”.

Don’t accept that you are not musical

If you are someone who has been told you are “tone deaf” or somebody has had the narrow-minded cheek to suggest you “can’t sing” – take heart! They are most probably wrong.

You need only spend a bit of time developing your ear and your voice, and there’s no reason you can’t become just as musical as you want to be.

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How do you learn intervals?
What’s the best way to learn intervals?

Step One: Get up to speed on the basics

Make sure you understand what intervals are and what you want to achieve.

Step Two: Choose a method

There are three popular approaches: Reference songs, solfege, and the “Nike method”.

1. Reference Songs: Using tunes you know as examples of the intervals, this can be an easy way to get started learning intervals
2. Solfege: If you’re using solfege in your music education already, this is the best option. If not, consider trying it: it’s a powerful approach.
3. The “Nike Method”: i.e. Just Do It! Treating intervals in their pure form as an isolated pair of notes, this is the most popular approach.

Whichever method you choose, use ear training tools to help you along the way.

Step Three: Practice every day

Regular practice is essential if you want to improve quickly as a musician, and interval recognition is no exception!

Even if it’s just 10 minutes a day, make the effort to be consistent and set aside the time to learn intervals and you’ll find your ears get better faster.

Find out more in our guide: “How to Learn Intervals”.

Permalink.

What is relative pitch?
What is absolute pitch?
What is perfect pitch?
Is perfect pitch the same as absolute pitch?
Do I have relative pitch or perfect pitch?

Relative Pitch is the ability to identify the pitch of notes relative to other notes you’ve heard.

For example, you might have a sense of a song’s tonic (resting) note and then be able to recognise the pitches in the melody using solfège.

Or you might use your interval recognition skills to judge the distances between notes and work out a tune that way.

The essential point is that you are identifying notes relative to other notes.

Absolute Pitch, often called ‘Perfect Pitch’, is the ability to identify notes without any point of reference.

For example, the musician who can tell you out of nowhere that a car’s horn is a “B♭”, or that the band is playing a song in a different key than the original recording.

It can also be used to work out tunes and play songs by ear, which is where the confusion between the two skills often arises: both skills can enable you to perform similar tasks with musical pitch.

It’s easy to remember the difference:

• Relative pitch is all about the relationships between notes relative to each other.
• Absolute pitch is about identifying notes, absolutely free of any other notes’ influence.

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How can I learn solfège with games online?
What online solfège games are there?

There seems to be a real lack of online solfege games – which is a pity given how powerful solfege can be for developing relative pitch!

There are lots of ear training games, and there are some good solfege resources, but we haven’t come across any good online soflege games.

If you do, please leave a comment and let us know!

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Why aren’t my ears better?
How do you get a musical ear?
How can I become naturally musical?
How can I hear more in music?
How do you become a good musician?

The short answer is: ear training.

Having a good ear for music means being able to hear accurately and understand what you’re hearing.

This takes a wide variety of forms, encompassing every aspect of music – including melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, audio quality, music production, effects, and more.

Here at EasyEarTraining.com we define “ear training” as “any activity you do to improve your aural skills” – and so the process of developing a good ear is: ear training!

This can be as relaxed and generally as listening to lots of music from different genres to develop your music appreciation, or highly specific rigorous exercises, targeting particular skills such as interval recognition.

Whichever area you focus on and whatever methods you choose, if you want a good ear for music you must spend time improving your aural skills with ear training.

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Should I learn all the intervals at once?
How long should I spend on each interval type?
What’s a better way to train with RelativePitch? Complete each lesson fully before moving on, or complete the first difficulty of all the lessons first?

This really depends on how you personally progress as you learn intervals.

Learning to recognise intervals is quite a specific skill, but it gradually builds your overall relative pitch ability.

This means that there aren’t hard “dependencies” about what you should learn first or how you should build up your ability.

You can choose to build your skill:

• “Broadly”: learning all intervals a little bit
  or
• “Deeply”: really mastering each type of interval before introducing more to your training.

Generally, we would recommend focusing on a small number of intervals and really mastering those (ascending, descending, harmonic, use in real music, relationships with chords etc.) before introducing more. This builds a more robust sense of relative pitch and avoids overwhelm.

The RelativePitch app is intentionally designed to be flexible. You can complete a lesson fully before moving on, or focus on the easiest difficulty of all the lessons in turn. Most students find themselves doing a bit of both.

This means that you may, for example, get stuck on distinguishing perfect fourths and perfect fifths in their harmonic form, and have difficulty completing that lesson. But you can:

• Spend some time on the easier levels of later lessons
• Use Custom Mode to pinpoint particular configurations you struggle with
  or
• Try using other instrument sounds.

Then when you return to it later you’ll probably find you are able to complete that lesson more easily.

We recommend aiming to complete each lesson fully before moving on to the next – but be fairly relaxed about continuing on if you find yourself getting stuck!

You can always return later to complete the harder difficulty levels.

This is actually one of the most rewarding parts of ear training: the exercises you do may be very specific, but you find they pay off in many varied ways.

Much of the work you do on different listening skills turns out to be very complementary and build your overall musical ability!

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How can I connect intervals to real music?
I want to hear the intervals in music
How do you use interval recognition?
What’s the best interval ear training method?
How do I get better at hearing intervals in music?
How do you take that next step so ear training is more than a game to score accurate discombobulated “points” on isolated intervals?

One disadvantage of the interval songs and “Nike” method of interval learning is that you can get very good at recognising isolated intervals but still struggle to use that in your real musical life…

There are a few ways to progress past this and really integrate your interval skills with the rest of your musical life:

1. Actively practise using intervals for the musical tasks you want to accomplish.

For example, if you want to play melodies by ear using your interval skills, spend some time explicitly trying to use intervals to work out melodies by ear.

You can practice in a simple way just by sitting down, listening to a melody, and then trying to work out the notes by figuring out each interval in turn. It’s slightly laborious, but doing it bit-by-bit using intervals like this will gradually internalise that way of hearing and it will start to flow and come instinctively.

If you want to make things a bit easier on yourself you could use the “Step and a Half” iOS app which generates melodies and challenges you to work out the intervals used.

Actively, intentionally using intervals in this way is essential to really see benefit from them in practical skills like playing by ear or composing.

If you don’t do this, you will still naturally improve a bit (because your overall relative pitch is improving) but taking the time to “teach” your brain how to use intervals for these tasks is what will really help you progress.

2. Use solfege!

This is the big benefit of solfege: that it’s inherently intimately connected to the musical “meaning” of notes.

Because your scale degrees are defined based on the tonic, it gives you a very practical mental framework for hearing pitches and intervals, which connects directly to tasks like playing by ear.

It’s never too late to start learning solfege, and even learning the basics and spending a bit of time practising them will bring benefits.

Knowing solfege is also nicely complementary to the intervals-only method, so you can use whichever is most helpful for a given musical task.

3. Listen to intervals in real use.

Ideally, all ear training would be directly related to “real music”. Although there can be benefit in focused listening to intervals in isolation, once you want to start using your interval recognition skills you’ll need to practise hearing them in a musical context too.

The Unravelling Music albums teach with this innovative approach, and Introducing Intervals teaches all the most common intervals. It uses real musical tracks, so that from the outset you hear the intervals in use – rather than as isolated “abstract” notes.

Want to learn more?

"Learning Intervals" is the all-in-one guide to improving your relative pitch with interval recognition.

Learn More →

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Why can’t I identify intervals by ear?
Why can’t I identify chords by ear?
I want to recognise intervals
How do you learn to hear chords?
How do you learn to hear intervals in music?
Why can some musicians just hear what the notes are?

Well you’re certainly not alone!

You might be surprised how many seemingly very capable musicians still struggle with this kind of aural skill.

One approach is to work on your sense of absolute pitch (“perfect pitch”) but most musicians will find it far more rewarding and musically effective to work on their sense of relative pitch.

For chords and intervals you might find our Pitch & Harmony series a good place to start.

Figuring out which chords are being played is a combination of:

1. Identifying the type of chord (e.g. major, minor, etc.)
2. Identifying the chord degree (e.g. tonic, IV chord, V chord, etc.)

For #1 we have a downloadable ear training practice pack which will help you recognise the basic chord types.

For #2 you can go a long way just by getting the hang of “3 chord songs” and “4 chord songs”.

When it comes to single notes and working out tunes by ear, the main thing is to just dive in and practice!

This kind of “melodic dictation” can be scary – but it doesn’t have to be!

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A chord is three or more notes played at once.

Different combinations of notes will create different chord sounds. Some work well together – some not so much!

Listen to a chord
(E major triad)

Here's a less pleasant chord!


Learning about the different types of chord, and learning to recognise them by ear is a key part of harmonic ear training and very important for composing, writing songs and playing by ear.

A series of chords played one after another is called a chord progression.

Learn more about Chords

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Why do rock songs use 4 chords?
Why do so many rock songs use the same four chords?
What are the four magic chords?
What are the most important chords?
What are the most popular chord progressions?
What’s the most common chord progression in pop music?
How can I play pop songs by ear?
How do you play songs by ear?

The most powerful concept in learning to play songs by ear is the “1 4 5 progression”, or the “3 chord song”.

This can also include “1 4 5 6″ (or “I IV V vi“) progressions and 4-chord songs.

In short:

Different keys, different arrangements, different styles – but the same progression!

Learn about this progression and playing songs by ear becomes much easier!

If you want to learn more about three chord songs we have an all-in-one specialist guide: “3-Chord Songs and the 4-Chord Trick”.

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How can I connect the sound of rhythms to traditional score notation?
How do you know what written rhythms sound like?
How do rhythm aural skills connect to music notation?

Connecting the traditional notation for musical rhythms with their sounds is a key part of rhythm ear training.

If you want rhythmic notation audio examples, you can try the Rhythm Puzzles game from Theta Music Trainer, or learn how to use music production software like Apple’s Garageband to do rhythm ear training to perfectly suit you.

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What is a mode?
What is a modal scale?
What’s the connection between scales and modes?
What’s the connection between scales and keys?

A scale is a collection of notes which are commonly used together, in order of pitch.

Listen to a major scale
(C major scale ascending)

A second example
(A melodic minor descending)

The first example spanned one octave, while the second example continued on, repeating the notes for a second octave.

If you want to compose music, improvise, or write songs, you can choose a key and a corresponding scale, and then use notes from that scale for your tune (melody) and chords (harmony). It’s like your ‘palette’ of notes to choose from.

Major scales and minor scales are the most common types, and there is a major scale for every major key. Minor scales are slightly more complicated (they come in 3 flavours: melodic, harmonic and natural) but they correspond to the minor keys in a similar way.

Modes are a special type of scale where the notes are chosen to suit a key (like with major and minor scales), but then they are put in a different order (by starting the sequence from a different note).

Here are two modes which use the same notes as the C Major example above:

Listen to a mode
(D Dorian mode)

Listen to a different mode
(E Phrygian mode)

Can you hear the different musical mood they create just by starting on a different note?

Learn more about scales

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Why do rock songs use 4 chords?
Why do so many rock songs use the same four chords?
What are the four magic chords?
What are the most important chords?
What are the most popular chord progressions?
What’s the most common chord progression in pop music?
How can I play pop songs by ear?
How do you play songs by ear?

The most powerful concept in learning to play songs by ear is the “1 4 5 progression”, or the “3 chord song”.

This can also include “1 4 5 6″ (or “I IV V vi“) progressions and 4-chord songs.

In short:

Different keys, different arrangements, different styles – but the same progression!

Learn about this progression and playing songs by ear becomes much easier!

If you want to learn more about three chord songs we have an all-in-one specialist guide: “3-Chord Songs and the 4-Chord Trick”.

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Why can’t I tell unison from octave intervals?
I’m sure that unison was actually an octave! (or vice-versa)

Harmonic unison and octave intervals are difficult to distinguish. It can be frustrating when taking a quiz, but it does reflect a real musical challenge.

The problem is that two notes an octave apart share the vast majority of the ‘overtones‘ from which they’re made. This means that if the two notes sound exactly together, you hear the combination almost as a single note with a slightly different timbre, rather than two distinct notes. This can make it very hard to distinguish it from a single note (unison).

People find this particularly hard with very high or very low notes (cases where the ear is generally able to hear less detail).

There are a couple of things you can do to help with these cases. First, you may find it really helps to use headphones – or if you already are, try a different pair. This can accentuate different frequencies in the notes and make it easier to tell when it’s unison or an octave.

The other option is to approach the harmonic case gradually, by using ascending and descending intervals but having the time between notes be very short. With our RelativePitch app you can set this in the app settings menu. This way the notes are separated enough to distinguish the two cases, but you mostly hear the two notes together, so your ear can tune into the harmonic effect.

Using the correction popup in RelativePitch to directly compare the two cases, or enabling anchor mode can also be useful to pin down the difference.

It can be frustrating when it seems like there’s just no difference between two cases, but with further practice and the tips above you should find you can gradually tune your ears into the subtle distinction!

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