Ear Training Guides
Everything written for this site, in the order most people need it. Each guide stands on its own, but they build on each other: pitch memory first, then intervals, then chords, then using all three to learn real music by ear. Every guide is free, and every one links to the exercise that practices what it teaches.
Open the trainerNo account needed. Works on your phone or desktop.
Start here
If you've never done ear training on purpose, these three pages are the whole plan: what to practice, in what order, how to make it a habit that survives a busy week, and the exercises themselves.
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How to Train Your Ear
The full method from single notes to chords: why the order matters, how many minutes a day actually work, and the mistakes that make people quit.
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A 10-Minute Daily Ear Training Routine
A fixed routine you can run before work or after a rehearsal: warm-up, interval block, chord block, weak-spot review, with a week-by-week progression for the first two months.
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Ear Training Exercises
The five exercises the trainer offers, what each one builds, the order to take them in, and a one-click start for every one.
Intervals
Intervals are the vocabulary of melody. Learn what they are, then borrow famous tunes as memory hooks until each one sounds like itself.
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What Is an Interval in Music?
All thirteen intervals inside an octave with their semitone counts, how the major, minor, and perfect names work, and which pairs sound alike enough to trip you up.
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Songs to Remember Intervals
A well-known melody for every interval, ascending and descending, plus the honest caveat about when to stop leaning on them.
Chords
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How to Recognize Chords by Ear
Hearing major, minor, diminished, and augmented triads, then seventh chords and inversions, with a practice ladder that adds one new sound at a time.
Pitch, and what's actually learnable
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Perfect Pitch vs Relative Pitch
What each skill is, what the research says about learning them as an adult, and why relative pitch is the one working musicians rely on.
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Relative Pitch Training
The four steps that build relative pitch, pitch memory to intervals to chords to a daily habit, how long each takes, and the exercise for each one.
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Written Pitch vs Concert Pitch
What a transposing instrument is, why a Bb clarinet's written C sounds as Bb, a table of how far each instrument transposes, and how to hear concert pitch while reading written pitch.
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Instrument Ranges, Clefs and Transpositions
One table for all 21 instruments: the clef each reads, its written and sounding range, and how far it transposes. Which read bass clef, which are in concert pitch.
For your instrument
The same ear, different fingers. Twenty-one instruments, one guide each, and no two alike: the clarinet's is about the twelfth, the trumpet's about landing the right partial, the viola's about the inner voice. Each guide's button starts the game on that instrument, in its own sound, on its own clef.
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Ear Training for Singers
Pitch matching, interval accuracy, and holding a harmony line, plus how ear training connects to sight-singing and staying in tune in a choir.
Putting it to work
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How to Transcribe Music by Ear
A repeatable process for learning songs and solos from recordings: find the key, follow the bass, chunk the melody, fill in the chords.
Practice tools
Reading about intervals won't teach your ear to hear them. Each guide points to the exercise that drills the skill it covers:
- Note recognition: one pitch, find it on the staff or keys.
- Interval ear trainer: two notes, locate both, or start by naming the interval.
- Chord ear trainer: triads and seventh chords, note by note, in any inversion.
- Jazz progressions: a piano-and-bass duo plays the changes and you name each chord.
- Daily challenge: the same five-round puzzle for everyone, once a day.
- All five exercises: what each one trains, in order, each starting in one click.
How these guides are written
Every guide is written by jeffspmusic, the musician and developer who builds the site, and reflects the method the trainer itself is built around. Each one shows its published and last-updated dates at the top. When the app changes, or when a reader points out something unclear through the contact page, the guide is revised rather than left to drift.