Ear training app

[6twenty7]

Hi guys looking for tips for ear training and learning songs by ear. Really hard to find anyone locally around me that doesn’t charge 60 bucks an hour and a lot of YouTube vids don’t really go into much detail or enough.

I’ve downloaded functioning ear trainer and have been using it for about 1 week. 1st day I couldn’t get anything right besides the root and octave notes. Now I can get all the keys of the c major scale correctly including in different octaves. I’m onto level 2 that includes chromatics which is a lot harder.

I really enjoy the app, but is this enough? The app only trains you so you can tell the distance from a key from either the root or octave. I don’t think it trains you with chord recognition and others. Looking for some extra stuff I need to add to the list of studies everyday.

[Llewlyn]

I really like "Functional Ear Trainer" (which I think is the one you say). The other one I use is "Earpeggio".

Ll.

[Pitar]

Dispense with the search for an app and just play/listen to your guitar. No app will enhance that and, if anything, it will probably distract from it with opinionated guidance the ear doesn't need to simply listen.

[stanron]

This is how I see it. Others will disagree. You choose. The ideal end point of a good 'ear' is the ability to hear a musical phrase and play it. At best the phrase can be quite long and there is no time between hearing and playing.* To start it might be just one or two notes and it might take quite a while to get it or them just right.

Hear a note, play a note, hear two notes and play two notes.

It sounds very simple. In one way it is very simple but in reality there is a lot being gained if this is done as a repetitive exercise.

The first thing is you are developing your aural memory. The second thing is you are finding notes on the fretboard. The third, and possibly the most important is that you are linking the two together.

If your apps help you do these three things then they are doing you good.

This will probably get contradicted but you don't need to know the names of the notes you play, at least not at first. All you need is the sound of the note and where it is on the fretboard.. Later on names of notes will be useful. Firstly with the organisation that keys bring to the table and later with writing and reading notation.

Don't get hung up over which string you find the note on. Confusions of this kind resolve themselves over time.

* Mozart had a great ear. There is a story of him visiting the Vatican and hearing a piece of choral music that a Pope had declared so beautiful that it should only be played in the Vatican.
Writing down ‘Miserere’ by Italian composer Gregorio Allegri, was punishable by excommunication, but 14 year old Mozart committed it to memory, went home and wrote it down. More details here;

https://zenmoments.org/allegri-miserere/

Big journeys begin with small steps.

[Llewlyn]

it can be argued that smaller steps that precede the ones you say can be walked with an app - such as recognizing major scale intervals.

Ll.

[815C]

I took some ear training classes when I was a student at North Texas a few decades ago. While those classes definitely helped me obtain a better ear, I have found an indirect benefit of practicing scales, modes, and arpeggios has been that I have developed a much better ear - far better than the ear I got when focused primarily on ear training.

Just a thought.

[rick-slo]

Do-Re-Mi and count as you go. If guitar in hand play the fret interval. For example open string to fifth fret is a fourth interval, open to seventh fret is a fifth interval.