Here are a few recent developments in the world of music and sound which might help inspire or guide you in your ear training!

Jump to:

• Big Update for Theta Music Trainer
• A possible end to the “Loudness War”
• Piano Carnival CD: Classical Music and Stories for Kids
• New Wah-Wah and SwingIt! apps for iOS
• Happy Birthday, Don Leslie!

Big Update for Theta Music Trainer

Back in October we covered the launch of Theta Music Trainer, an exciting new website which provides a wide range of ear training games. You play online via your browser, and the games teach everything from intervals and chords, to rhythm, music reading, and more. Varying difficulty levels make it easy to get started, and there are ‘courses’ you can take to build up your skills in a structured way.

Here at Easy Ear Training we love seeing fun new ways to develop aural skills, and so we were excited to hear about the new version of Theta Music Trainer, which introduces three new games, a smart Personal Trainer feature, and strong support for music teachers to use the games with students in the classroom. It also adds Spanish to the English and Japanese language options already available.

Number Blaster is a fun arcade-style game to learn musical numbering

Two of the new games focus on your ability to judge pitches, with Speed Pitch testing your ability to make broad judgements quickly, and Dango Brothers essentially making a game of tuning a guitar string. I’ll admit, I had to look up what a Dango is – but fortunately this didn’t hinder my ability to enjoy the game!

Dango Brothers checks your fine-grained pitch judgement

Click to read the rest…

What if Axl and Slash had hung out with Fats Domino? Or Metallica met Miles Davis? A new music processor called The Swinger is looking to find out, by adding a swing to any song you throw at it. Get ready to hear those classics in a whole new way – and as the Duke once put it: “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing!”

Music Hack Day

At the cutting edge of digital music research, young developers get together periodically for a ‘Music Hack Day‘ – an intense 24 hour hackathon to create a new, cool music technology project, and show it off to everyone. There are always some incredible and fascinating demos which emerge, and last week’s hack day in San Francisco was no exception.

This blog post over at the Yahoo! Developer Network Blog gives a great overview of several of the projects. One which stood out for me was The Swinger – simple concept, fantastic demonstration of how far music tech has come in the last 10 years, and a wonderful way to illustrate the concept of swung beats to all you ear trainers out there!

First a quick reminder of what it means to have that swing… Click to read the rest…