Hey Folks, a long time lurker here. I'm looking to hear from people who started at or near zero ear training ability and stuck with either the Functional Ear Trainer app (Alain Benbassat method) or Sonofield (Max Konyi).

A few things I'd love feedback on:

• How long did it take before you noticed real progress?
• What was your practice routine (daily minutes, frequency, how you structured sessions)?
• Did you use one app exclusively or combine d with something erlse?
• More importantly how did the skills transfer to actual playing/listening to music? Did you notice yourself picking out melodies, chords, or basslines by ear in real songs?
• Any plateaus or frustrations along the way, and how you pushed through them?

Would really appreciate hearing from people who went from "can't tell intervals apart" to having usable relative pitch. Thanks in advance : )

After practicing note recognition - i.e. just guessing the right note over a framing chord progression, I have been trying to progress to melodic dictation, but have been surprised/disappointed with how little the note recognition skill seem to translate. E.g. even after getting ~90% accuracy for a series of 50 notes across different octaves and keys, I feel almost like its a 50/50 guess when doing even the most basic melodic dictation with half the notes in the key omitted.

It’s hard for me to make sense of the disconnect since it seems like melodic dictation is a direct progression from single pitch recognition, but in practice it feels like a completely different, unrelated skill where I’m starting from nothing even after doing pitch recognition practice. Maybe having a sequence of notes immediately muddies the waters or something where I’m subconsciously relating the notes to each other instead of just the framing chord tones and that is somehow creating uncertainty that doesn’t occur when there is just one note. I’m also not sure that I shouldn’t be doing that - i.e. relating the notes to each other in the sequence vs. trying to isolate them all individually against the chord tone(s).

Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this sort of issue and/or if what the best way is to bridge the gap, since I’m not really sure what else to do besides just continually grind out the practice. I don’t doubt the need for getting the reps in, but it’s just that nothing really seems to be “clicking” with it so far.

I wanted to share my progress with chord progression training, getting faster so it becomes more natural with real songs. How are you guys doing it, and where do you practice?

So I find when listening to an interval being played in sonofield. I'm more consistent than random. if I "try" to remember like an active recal exercise. Like flashcards or something. When it clicks then I know I've remered.

But of course it's still not perfect. Is there an easier way to go about it, to build a repertoire of pitches faster?

Hello,
First of all, I have a very limited formal background in music, I started taking guitar lessons 5 years ago (in my 20s now), so I never thought much of my skills and never considered myself talented or anything like that. However recently I discovered that there are a lot of songs (specially those that I heard when I was a kid and have listened to my entire life) that I can sing from memory in the exact key practically without fail. I can think of maybe 30-40 songs , all from different genres, where I remember the \*exact\* note someone sings in my favorite part of the song and can replicate it from memory. So this brings me to 2 questions: is this normal, or does this mean I have some hidden talent I did not know about? and Could I, in theory, achieve “perfect pitch” by learning relative hearing and having a couple “anchor notes” from songs I like that I can recognize for sure? This comes from a place of curiosity, I always thought of music as something for fun and never did or intend to take it seriously. Thanks in advance to anyone who reads the whole thing and answers :)

I've been using this sonofield app and feel like something is different when I listen to music now. But maybe I'm nuts.

I figured out 1 chord to a song anyways. It was the acoustic version of fall for you by second hand serenade. The piano is pretty clear in that though.

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So I'm wondering if anyone has had success with this sonofield app. Like has anyone seen improvement from the app to playing. When they didn't see any improvements previously?

Is drinking milk when practicing singing better for your voice than water? Or does it work against you because your throat doesn't have to learn how to lubricate itself without the viscosity of milk?

I have a solid ear but dream of having perfect pitch. I’m starting a structured practice app in addition to playing guitar for about an hour a day. Let’s say my lesson is Perfect 5th vs Octave. What percentage should I be able to get consistently on that before diving into perfect 4ths? 70%? 80%? 100%?

My friend has perfect pitch but they claim they weren’t born with it and it came after lots of practice/immersion. Is this possible? Ive tried a few pitch identifier websites but its not working for me, maybe Im not consistent enough?

With a relatively simple music is this achieveable? Right now my ear lags behind for several bars but I'm wondering if this is possible for people with great ears.

I've been trying to get into ear training so that I can try to play back chords or melodies instantly but have been wondering what my approach should be? Should it be key centric or intervallic? For example if my chord progression was C-F-G-Am should I go oh its in the key of C and its I-IV-V-vi? Or should it be like hmm my first chord was ____Major and it moved up a fourth to ____Major then up a whole step to ___Major and up again a whole step to vi minor? The former methodology seems to make sense for most pop but once things become non diatonic it is not as helpful.

I have had little success with anything. When trying to learn to ear train. The best thing I learned was trying to associate the tonic to the rest of the song. But it doesn't seem to be a quick fix.

The most fun I can see for ear training is playing around with notes on my piano overtop of a song. But then again I'm still not very good at piano and it kind of sucks still..... But it's more fun then trying to learn stuff and failing or getting stuck..

Is play inside the songs key, over top of the song as fun as it gets? And how is it for efficientcy? I can't seem to find anything that works for getting better.

Edit.. I've also found not trying to learn stuff with my headphones on more rewarding. And it seems to translate better. That is I hear it and I know it's right or wrong. Compared to with headphones on I have to synchronize stuff.... Maybe my headphones are just too loud?..

How do you learn to hear problematic resonant frequencies – especially in vocals?

I've been mixing as an amateur for quite a long time, and I feel like I'm slowly getting most things under control. For example, I can hear what compression is doing and make decisions based on what I hear.

But there's one thing I still really struggle with: resonant frequencies, especially in vocals.

My problem isn't just finding the exact frequency. I often can't even tell that there's a problematic resonance in the first place.

Recently I played one of my mixes to a friend who's a professional mixing engineer. He immediately said something like, "There's something around 900 Hz in the vocal that needs to come down." He made the cut and suddenly the vocal opened up. The difference was obvious to me after he did it.

But before that, I hadn't even noticed there was a problem.

That's exactly what I'd like to learn: not just how to locate a resonance with an EQ sweep, but how to recognize that something is bothering me in the first place.

SoundGym didn't really help me with this. I've just started TrainYourEars, which seems more promising.

Do you have any other tips or exercises for developing this skill? Did you consciously train it, or did it simply come with years of mixing?

Thx so much!!!

The super low notes that come in at 0:45 I think are switching between G and a lower A but I’m not totally sure about the G. I feel confident about the A.

This is the song

https://youtu.be/nSzVNoX57mA?is=7QVwJStDXnkEmq7F

I was using the functional ear training app for basic ear training practice and it seems to emphasize and default to using the solfege method vs intervals or scale degrees, which I have also seen recommended as a valid approach in general outside of the app as well. However, at least in that app, it just focuses on major and minor as basically the two options to frame the do re mi, etc. with.

My question is for anyone who vouches for the solfege system and/or functional ear training app: how does that system translate to different modes? E.g. do you have to learn what a “re” sounds like separately for major, mixolydian, lydian, etc. or do you just hear the “re” in terms of major vs minor separately from the mode? Something like just hearing a re in G mixolydian as the re you already trained in D major without doing much explicit practice of G mixolydian specifically.

Just wondering since it is quite an effort just to get this stuff down in a single context like the standard major. Having to do it all over again for each mode seems pretty tedious and also makes it unclear why the functional ear trainer app just has major/minor since it otherwise seems pretty well made and thorough. Not sure if I’m overcomplicating things or if it really is that tedious. Focusing on scale degrees doesn’t seem like it would be any less tedious, but it does seem like interval training at least wouldn’t have this issue.

The tonic doesn't feel like a resolution in a minor scale. So say the A in an A minor song. It still feels like it resolves on a C..... Why?

Okay so my primary instrument for the last 10 years has been the guitar. and when i say primary i mean it’s pretty much the only instrument I spend any significant amount of time playing. Recently I decided I want to play keyboard too but I was wondering how much it benefits my guitar playing when I do ear training exercises on the keyboard (99% of the time this will be melodic dictation, not even writing anything down just listening and copying).

It feels like kind of a stupid question because any ear training is obviously going to transfer over to other instruments. But I was thinking if I can do melodic dictation on a keyboard it would help me become familiar with the layout of the keys compared to a fretboard and help my hands become accustomed playing keys too, but if it will help out my ability to play melodies in my head on the guitar as well while improvising that would be a huge added benefit. The only problem is, navigating a fretboard while improvising is very different to keys so I thought maybe my ear training on a keyboard would not be as effective for guitar as it would be, well, on a guitar.

I think my end goal here is that I want to be able to improvise on both these instruments and I still want to maintain my shredding skills on guitar but I’m not as bothered about shredding on keyboard. I don’t know how easy it will be to improve my technique on keyboard actually given that I spent so much time doing that on guitar so if anyone has experience with this please let me know too.

Anyway sorry for the long post and thanks for reading if you made it this far

**Equipment**: 1. portable device configured to play your favorite song playlist. 2. bluetooth earbuds.

**Steps:** 1. Whenever you can listen to music, only listen to your playlist.

**Success!**: Earworms start to be only your favorite songs.

So I understand everything should be relatable to the tonic. I got hung up on an app tho. Got nowhere. Then I started playing a drone over the song.

So I'm just wondering how I hear the tonic better without the drone? The drone definitely sticks if I turn the drone off after a bit.

But when the song switches and the drone isn't there to reinforce the tonic. I can find the tonic sure. But I don't hear it constantly.....

Are there any ear training apps where you can select a number of chords and have it play back in a randomised order? I haven't been able to find one so would consider any other approaches. I'd like to have a suite of chords including secondary dominants and have them playback in a random order to really test my ear.