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Ear Training
Pick an exercise, press Start, listen, and name what you heard — with the buttons, the number keys or the on-screen piano.
Name the distance between two notes.
After each answer the notes are shown here. Press keys to play them.
Adaptive: 3 of 12 in play — get 8 of the last 10 right to add Minor 3rd.
Settings
Intervals (at least two)
Direction
Your results
No answers yet.
Interval reference songs
Link each interval to the opening of a tune you already know, then sing the tune’s first two notes in your head when you hear a new interval. Use the songs as a bridge, not a crutch — the aim is to recognise the interval’s own sound.
| Interval | Ascending | Descending |
|---|---|---|
| Minor 2nd (1) | Jaws theme · White Christmas | Joy to the World · Für Elise |
| Major 2nd (2) | Happy Birthday (2nd–3rd notes) · Frère Jacques | Mary Had a Little Lamb · Three Blind Mice |
| Minor 3rd (3) | Greensleeves · Smoke on the Water | Hey Jude · The Star-Spangled Banner |
| Major 3rd (4) | When the Saints Go Marching In · Kumbaya | Swing Low, Sweet Chariot · Summertime |
| Perfect 4th (5) | Here Comes the Bride · Amazing Grace | O Come, All Ye Faithful · Eine kleine Nachtmusik |
| Tritone (6) | The Simpsons theme · Maria (West Side Story) | Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath) |
| Perfect 5th (7) | Twinkle Twinkle Little Star · Star Wars main theme | The Flintstones theme |
| Minor 6th (8) | The Entertainer (3rd–4th notes) | – |
| Major 6th (9) | My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean · NBC chimes | Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen |
| Minor 7th (10) | Somewhere (West Side Story) · Star Trek original theme | An American in Paris · Watermelon Man |
| Major 7th (11) | Take On Me (chorus) | I Love You (Cole Porter) |
| Octave (12) | Somewhere Over the Rainbow · Singin' in the Rain | There's No Business Like Show Business · Willow Weep for Me |
Space or R replays · Enter or N next · P reference pitch · 1–9, 0, −, = answer
Works in your browser. No account needed.
Frequently asked questions
What is ear training and how long does it take?
Ear training is practice at recognising musical elements by sound alone — the distance between two notes, the quality of a chord, the flavour of a scale. It improves with short, frequent sessions: ten minutes a day tends to do more than an hour once a week. How long it takes varies a great deal from person to person; most people find the octave, fifth and major and minor thirds settle first, and the sevenths and the tritone take longer.
How does the adaptive difficulty work?
With adaptive difficulty on, each exercise starts with the three most distinct items you have selected — for intervals the octave, perfect fifth and major third. After every ten answers, 8 or more right adds the next item from a fixed easiest-to-hardest order, and 4 or fewer right takes one away again, never going below two. Separately, the question picker weights items by how often you have missed them, so trouble spots come up more often. Your level is saved in this browser.
Why use songs to learn intervals?
Linking an interval to the first notes of a tune you already know gives you something to compare against: if the rising interval sounds like the start of Here Comes the Bride, it is a perfect fourth. The Interval reference songs panel lists examples for each interval, going up and going down. Treat them as a stepping stone — with practice you start to recognise the interval itself, which is faster than singing a song in your head.
What is the reference pitch for?
Most people have relative pitch rather than perfect pitch: they can judge a note against another one but not name it cold. In Note naming, the tool plays a reference (middle C or A4, your choice) before each mystery note, so you name the note by the interval from the reference. Turn the reference off in Settings to test absolute pitch recognition instead. The reference button plays it on demand in every exercise.
Is my progress saved, and is anything uploaded?
Your settings, level, best streak and all-time results are stored in your browser's local storage on this device, so they are there next time you open the page in the same browser. Nothing is sent to a server. Clearing site data or using a private window starts you from scratch, and the Reset link clears one exercise.
Do I need headphones or a real piano?
No. The notes are synthesised in the browser with the Web Audio API — there are no sound files to download — so any speakers work, although headphones make low notes and chords easier to hear. On iPhone, the tool asks Safari to play as media so the Ring/Silent switch should not mute it on recent iOS versions.
About this tool
This ear trainer covers the four drills most music courses use. Interval recognition plays two notes — rising, falling or together — and asks for the distance between them, from a minor second to an octave. Chord quality plays a major, minor, diminished or augmented triad, or one of the seventh chords (major 7th, dominant 7th, minor 7th, half-diminished and diminished 7th) and suspended chords, broken, blocked or both, with optional inversions. Scale recognition plays a major, minor, harmonic or melodic minor scale, one of the church modes, a pentatonic or the blues scale. Note naming plays a single note, optionally after a reference pitch.
Every question is built on a random root note within the register you choose, so you learn the sound of the interval or chord itself rather than one particular pair of pitches. The sound is a small piano-like synthesiser: two slightly detuned tones with a hammer-shaped set of harmonics, a quick attack, a decay that is longer for low notes and a tone that darkens as it fades, much as a struck string does.
The method is simple: listen, answer, check, compare. A wrong answer is never just marked wrong — the right answer is shown on the keyboard and the Hear my answer button plays your choice from the same starting note, so you hear the difference side by side. The mix-up chart counts every answer by what was played and what you chose, which makes patterns obvious: a minor sixth heard as a major sixth, or a dominant seventh taken for a major seventh.
Everything works from the keyboard: Space or R replays, Enter or N moves on, P plays the reference pitch, the number keys answer, and in Note naming the letter keys C to B answer directly (hold Shift for a sharp). Settings, levels and results are remembered in this browser, and the whole tool runs locally with no account and no uploads.