Ear Training Apps & Exercises For Developing Relative Pitch

Ear training can be a bit like eating spinach and broccoli. Some people enjoy it, but most of us do it because it’s good for our health.

Learning to recognize musical intervals, scales, and chord relationships ultimately makes us better musicians. Even those fortunate enough to have perfect pitch still have to build up a vocabulary to describe what they’re hearing.

As young people, we idolize artists and the music they make. We don’t see all the hard work that goes into learning music theory. It’s usually later in life, during formal music education, that we sit down and work to develop relative pitch.

The fact that you’re reading this article means you’ve already joined the small group of musicians willing to put in the work to learn and improve their aural skills. We’ll do everything we can here to empower you with techniques and resources that get you where you’re trying to go.

Let’s plan on learning some tried-and-true ear training exercises together so you can practice at any time without depending on technology to assist you. Software will turbo-charge those efforts with interactive tutorials and gamification, and we’re going to start off by reviewing some of the best apps you can use alongside traditional methods.

Just remember that at the end of the day, the goal is to find techniques that you actually enjoy and most important of all, to stick with it!

Best Ear Training Apps in 2024

We can recommend a few apps to help you develop better relative pitch. As we’ll explain later in this article, there’s a big difference between interval training for individual notes and learning to recognize chord progressions. So, each of the following will focus on one of those skills.

MusicTheory.net for learning music fundamentals

We have to learn to walk before we try to run. So, if you’re a beginner musician with no background in sheet music, solfege, or Roman numeral notation used for chord progressions, we highly recommend starting with MusicTheory.net.

This free online resource takes you from square one and will help you build up the essential vocabulary required in order to practice ear training effectively.

EarMaster for interval training and sight singing

EarMaster is a popular ear training app for practicing melodic interval and rhythm training. It centers around classical sheet music notation, so it will be best for people who play traditional music styles. Its jazz and blues modules are similar to those found in music schools like Berklee College of Music.

Chord Crush for recognizing chord progressions

Chord Crush is a fun and engaging app that specializes in teaching chord relationships over melodic intervals. Choose from guided lessons, games, and even reports that show you where you’ve made the most errors.

Chord Crush ear training modules

Here’s a quick overview of the different learning modules available in Chord Crush:

1. Level Up: This is the best place to start if you’re just getting started with learning chord relationships. There are six worlds or “levels” to move through, each with a collection of chords you’ll need to identify. The puzzles get progressively harder as you ascend the ranks.
2. Daily Challenge: Every day, a new song challenge is published. Users listen to a short excerpt from a popular song and try to name the missing chord in a sequence. Bookmark the page and take one minute per day to test yourself.
3. Crush: This is the ideal mode for students who have strong aural skills. If you fail, you can move on without repeating the challenge. Crush offers an almost endless stream of chord progressions to solve. They’re similar to the Daily puzzle but with a graph that plots your accuracy over the course of your training.
4. Rush!: Solve as many puzzles as you can within 3 minutes and see if you can beat your personal record. Sometimes, the time pressure can be helpful and motivational, particularly as you become more advanced and comfortable with the game.
5. Customize: Do you struggle with a few specific types of chords? If you’re a paying subscriber, you can use the customize option to limit the puzzles you’re exposed to. Filter by key and scale, inversion, suspensions, chord extensions, borrowed chords, and even BPM.
6. Missed Chords: If you want to see the chords you missed, you’ll need to subscribe to the paid version of the app. It’s a great way to identify your weak spots and strengthen them.

Follow the leaderboard to see where your success stands relative to other users on the platform. The app is part of the broader Hooktheory ecosystem of music education tools and music theory resources to help songwriters broaden their vocabulary and create better music.

As noted earlier, the app provides a free-of-charge experience, and for those seeking enhanced features, there’s an option to subscribe. Start training for free today.

Ear Training Exercises for Beginners

Interval ear training is one of the most common starting points for beginners.

The goal is to learn how to identify distances between two musical pitches. This less glamorous, foundational skill naturally leads to other important musical skills, like transcribing melodies and real-time improvisation.

Exercise #1: Solfege intervals in major and minor keys

Here’s a simple technique you can use to start training your musical ear:

1. Begin by running up and down a major scale on your instrument of choice. If you’re on a piano, start with C Major to keep it simple. The tone row would be CDEFGABCBAGFEDC.
2. Return to the root note. Play and sing that first note of the scale, followed by the second. You can use vowel sounds or the solfege scale (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti). Speak the interval out loud: major second.
3. Continue this process for each scale degree. As you progress, continue speaking the names of the interval out loud: major third, perfect four, perfect fifth, major sixth, major seventh, and octave.
4. When you reach the octave, return in the opposite direction. “Do-Ti-Major Seventh,” “Do-La-Major Sixth,” etc.
5. Repeat this exercise using a minor scale with the same root note, singing the notes and speaking the intervals. There will be three new intervals: the minor third, minor sixth, and minor seventh.
6. Shift to a new tonal center and start the process again with major and minor keys. You can cycle through the circle of fifths to eliminate the burden of randomly picking a new key.

As you get comfortable identifying intervals in every key signature, try practicing with the chromatic scale instead. The next section outlines all twelve intervals, with mnemonic devices for remembering each unique sound.

Exercise #2: Famous melodies to assist with interval ear training

Some people find associating each interval with notes from a famous melody helpful. For example, the song “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” begins with a perfect fifth interval. So, if you hear two notes back to back and think it’s a fifth, check to see if it matches the melody.

To save you the mental effort of coming up with those associations, we’ve listed out some ideas below:

1. Unison: Countless examples of melodies repeat the same note twice. I often think of the Beatles tune “Something,” which repeats the same note twice for that same word something.
2. Flat 2nd: The theme from Jaws is an easy reference point, but if that’s unpleasant, you can also think of it in terms of the Police song, “Every Breath You Take,” on the word every.
3. Major 2nd: The first two notes of “Happy Birthday” illustrate a major 2nd interval. If you know the Ninja Turtle theme song, that’s my personal go-to.
4. Minor 3rd: Michael Jackson’s song “Bad” uses the minor third interval in the words “because.” It’s common in a lot of blues songs.
5. Major 3rd: The beginning of “When the Saints Go Marching In” showcases a major 3rd interval in the words Oh when.
6. Perfect 4th: The opening of “Here Comes the Bride” demonstrates a perfect 4th interval. You can also reference the first notes of “Amazing Grace.”
7. Diminished 5th: The first two notes of the Simpsons theme are my favorite reference point for this tritone interval. It resolves up to the perfect fifth.
8. Perfect 5th: The iconic theme from “Star Wars” highlights a perfect 5th interval, though I find the opening notes of “Twinkle, Twinkle” easier to remember.
9. Minor 6th: Eminem’s obnoxious tune “Without Me” uses the minor sixth interval.
10. Major 6th: The famous NBC sound logo uses the major six interval. If you’re a video game nerd and played Final Fantasy 7, you can also think of the first two notes in the iconic melody from Tifa’s Theme.
11. Minor 7th: Herbie Hancock’s instrumental tune “Watermelon Man” opens with a small chromatic line leading to the root note. The minor seventh interval comes after that and this is the melody that comes to mind whenever I hear this interval.
12. Major 7th: The song “Take On Me” features the major seventh leading up to the octave.
13. Root-Octave: The song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” features the octave interval in the two syllables of some-where.

Singing up from the root note is only half the battle. When you lock these in, you’ll want to come up with another set of associations in the opposite direction, from the root downward. Instead of singing up from C to G as a perfect fifth, try singing down to the G below at the interval of a perfect fourth.

Exercise #3: Sight singing from sheet music

Sight singing from sheet music generally comes after you’ve internalized the intervals ascending and descending from an anchor note. You can start with simple melodies that you’re unfamiliar with. Then play them on your instrument of choice and see which notes you got wrong. Those are the intervals you need to strengthen.

Exercise #4: Dictation (transcribing melodies and chord progressions)

Music dictation refers to the transcription of melodies and chord progressions by ear. So, if you’re listening to a song you like, here’s a method to improve this skill.

1. Choose a song with a melody you’re familiar with and press play on the recording.
2. After listening to the melody, pause and find the first note on your instrument.
3. Sing or hum the melody to yourself one note at a time. Use your interval ear training to make an educated guess with each new note.

Don’t rush the process. It’s better to go painfully slow at first and get it right. Play the first note and then the second to see if you guessed correctly. Then, repeat across the full melody.

Transcribing chord progressions requires a different set of skills. Even when you become comfortable with melodic dictation, it can be difficult to identify individual notes in a harmonic structure. I recommend becoming familiar with Roman numeral chord notation.

Here’s an ear-training method for chords that can help you build up gradually. If you skipped over the single-note interval training module above, refer to it and start there.

1. Instead of individual notes, we’ll begin with triads on an instrument like piano or guitar.
2. Begin in a major key, starting with the root triad and ascending by a whole note to the minor triad built on the second scale degree. Speak out loud that this is a “Major I – Minor ii” progression.
3. After practicing each of these triads in their root position, go through the same process with first and second inversions.
4. Later you can explore chord extensions, beginning with seventh chords and then later trying complex voicings like an add6, add9, sus4, and so forth.
5. Repeat this process in both major and minor keys.
6. When you become comfortable, you can begin exploring borrowed chords. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, check out our articles on tritone substitutions and cinematic chord progressions.

Admittedly, learning to recognize chord intervals can take a lot of practice.

Research, like this paper from Liberty University, has shown that educational music games help accelerate learning and improve retention. So, if you’ve been struggling to stay engaged while practicing on your own, we highly recommend giving music games a try!

Read a full overview of Chord Crush or click here to get started for free.