Ear Master have announced a new light version of the excellent Ear Master Pro 5 ear training software. This new Essential version includes the central features of Ear Master Pro at a price of less than 30 euros.

The Essential edition includes Ear Master’s basic ear training exercise areas: interval comparison and identification, chord identification and rhythm reading.

You won’t get the advanced exercise areas including chord inversions and progressions, scale identification and melodic dictation.

You do get Ear Master’s excellent on screen guitar (or piano, or bass, or staff, or any string instrument) to enter music and responses to exercises. So you get the benefit of matching your ear knowledge to your instrument.

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Ear training usually puts a lot of emphasis on learning to recognize notes, intervals, chords, melodies and chord progressions. But the ability to recognize and reproduce rhythms is just as important as these skills.

Most music requires you to learn and reproduce quite sophisticated rhythm patterns. So developing your ability to recognize and reproduce rhythm is essential if you want to transpose music to your instrument.

And what better place to get some rhythm practice than with a drummer? There are few notes to worry about so you can focus all your attention on the rhythm pattern.

So here is a video that will show you some rhythm recognition exercises you can use to improve listening and rhythmic reaction skills. You don’t have to have a drum, simply tap the rhythms on a table or on your thighs and hands.

Test and develop your rhythm skills with drum exercises like these. Combined with interval exercises they will help you develop your skill at recognizing melodies, chords and rhythms.

Want to develop your ear training rhythm skills? Ear Master Pro 5 has exercise areas dedicated to rhythmic dictation that improves your rhythm recognition skills. Download it today and try it free for 21 days.

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Here’s this week’s update on my ear training progress. I’ve been working with Ear Master Pro again this week. Read on to find out how I did and learn about my experience using a guitar to enter answers directly.

This Week’s Progress

This week I scored 100% for the descending major and minor 2nds intervals exercise. This is a big improvement on my 46% two and a half weeks ago, and I’m pretty pleased about it.

But what pleases me most is the change in the way I hear those intervals that occurred this week. For the first time I recognized instantly the sound of each interval.

Rather than humming back the notes to myself to try to figure out the interval, I simply recognized their sound as soon as I heard them. This is a clear sign that Ear Master is developing my ear skills.

Chord Identification

Ear Master’s standard tutor includes chord identification exercises that I tried out this week.

The first few exercises play major, minor, augmented and diminished triads. You respond by entering the three notes played on the music staff, guitar fretboard or piano. I used the guitar fretboard and found it’s also a useful way to revise notes on the fretboard.

After a couple of exercises I noticed that the name of the triad played is shown in the music staff. This made it rather easy to identify the triad!

I couldn’t find a way to turn off the display of the triad name, and it’s hard not to notice it on the screen. I found a workaround by removing the staff to show only the fretboard on screen.

Guitar Input

As I mentioned in my Ear Master Pro review, answers can be entered by singing or playing an instrument into a microphone. I tried this by plugging my electro-acoustic guitar into the computer.

The microphone setup wizard was easy to use and got the microphone levels adjusted for my guitar. I made almost no change to the default settings.

I tested guitar input with interval identification exercises. When Ear Master plays the interval it shows the bottom note on the screen. It took me a few questions to realize that I only had to play the second note, not both notes of the interval.

Once I’d figured this out though the system worked well. You simply play the note to identify the interval and press the ctrl key to select it. The note Ear Master hears is shown on the fretboard or on the music staff while you play it.
I think that playing the notes directly on an instrument is a great way to reinforce the ear training and help associate the sounds you hear to notes that you play. I plan to use this more in the future.

That wraps up this week’s progress report. I’ll be back with another next week. If you want to follow my progress sign-up for the Ear Guitar RSS feed.

Learn more about Ear Master Pro ear training software and download a free 21 day trial at Ear Master.

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Here’s the latest on my guitar ear training challenge. It’s been a busy week since my last report, I didn’t do the exercises every day as planned but only every other day. So, what did I learn…?

Interval Comparison

I continued working with the interval comparison tutor. This tutor plays two different intervals and you have to pick which of the two is the greater.

I continued working with minor and major 2nds - where I’d discovered I had plenty of room to improve, as well as minor and major thirds, where I’d scored better.

I improved my scores in all areas, particularly the descending intervals that were harder for me on both 2nds and 3rds. You can see my scores and progress when I show you Ear Master Pro’s statistics feature further down the page.

Interval Identification

I spent more time on the interval identification exercises this week in addition to the comparisons. I was surprised to discover this was easier for me than interval comparisons.

Ear Master Statistics

With over a week of training under my belt I was glad to discover Ear Master Pro’s statistics. While you perform the exercises Ear Master keeps track of your scores and the time taken to answer questions. You can follow your progress by viewing statistics for each exercise.

See my stats for interval comparison exercises below, for example.

Ear Master Interval Comparison Stats

Next Week

Next week I plan to move on and try some more intervals, as well as more difficult exercises. For example, the first interval comparisons use a common note in the two intervals compared. Later exercises use different notes.

I didn’t time to try using my guitar to input answers this week, so that’s another thing I hope to report on next week, too.

Do you have an ear training question or tip? I’d love to hear from you, please leave a comment using the reply form below.

Learn more about Ear Master Pro 5 by reading my review.

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My guitar ear training challenge started one week ago so here’s a first report on my results.

This week I installed the Ear Master Pro 5 application I selected and started to work with it. You can find an initial review of the software here if you’re interested.

Interval Comparison

I started work on the first exercise area, interval comparisons. The standard tutor proposes 42 lessons covering all intervals from unison to octave ascending, descending and harmonically.

The software plays two intervals, either melodically - one note after another, or harmonically - both notes sound together. You must choose which of the intervals is the larger.

The first exercises work with minor and major second intervals, that’s one fret and two frets respectively on the guitar.

Initial scores

Each exercise proposes 15 pairs of intervals to compare. I did quite well with the first on ascending intervals, scoring 82%. The descending intervals were harder for me and I scored only 42% at my first attempt.

Harmonic intervals were much easier for me to identify, I got around 90% here.

Progress?

After doing the exercises for about five to ten minutes each day this week I have improved my scores. More importantly, I am starting to really recognize the sound of the different intervals as soon as I hear them played.

Here are my scores at the end of the first week:

Ascending minor and major 2nds - 90%
Descending minor and major 2nds - 67%
Harmonic minor and major 2nds - 93%
Ascending minor and major 3rds - 100%

Ear Master Remarks

The software has performed reliably and was easy to use. I tried out note entry in Ear Master on the virtual guitar fretboard, stave, and multiple choice. All three work well.

Conclusion

I was surprised to discover I scored so differently at identifying ascending, descending or harmonic intervals. But in all the areas I made quite good progress.

Next week I’ll continue with interval comparisons and will explore some of the other exercise areas. I’ll also try to bring you a report on Ear Master’s history reports that allow you to monitor and track your progress.

Ear Master Pro 5

Read my Ear Master 5 Pro review.

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Fellow guitarist and musician,

Are you frustrated by your inability to recognize chords and melodies by ear? I am and that is why I created this blog. It relates the story of my efforts to train my ears to recognize music and transcribe it to the guitar.

I can already play the guitar, some might even say reasonably well. I can play a large number of chords and use them to play rock, pop, blues and even a couple of jazz songs. I also know my way around a few scales and can improvise decent blues or rock licks… if I know the chord progression beforehand.

But there is something missing from my playing, something that really limits my enjoyment of music. The problem is that I can’t recognize music by ear, I mean melodies, chords, licks, solos…

Sure, I can figure out a few simple melodies after a lot of fumbling around and randomly trying notes. But what I want is the ability to recognize a series of notes or chords and instantly reproduce them on my guitar. Or to recognize the key and chord progression of a song being played so I can improvise over it using my chord skills without having to memorize the chord progression from a song book or tab first.

This ability would allow me to jam with other musicians freely and without feeling bad about not following what is going on in a piece of music as I listen to it.

So this year I have decided to focus on improving my ear skills. I have set myself three specific challenges that I am going to blog about on this site.

1. Learn to recognize melodies and chords within two to three months.

2. Lean to recognize the key and chord progression of blues, pop and rock songs within six months.

3. Learn to transcribe the guitar parts of songs - chord positions, riffs, licks, solos - within one year.

I am sure that if I develop these abilities it will take my guitar and music playing to a new level. Instead of thinking about moving my fingers around fret boxes I’ll be thinking in music and playing what I hear in my head. I could at last learn and study songs and players I really want to rather than only those for which I can find transcriptions or tab.

If you want to follow or join me as I work on my challenge sign up for the RSS feed to get regular updates on what I’ve tried and the results.

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