OneTaskBy Tim King · Updated
Ear Training Online
Interval and Chord Quality Quiz, Free Online
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How the Ear Training Quiz works
This ear training online tool quizzes intervals and chords. Press Play question and the page sounds a random interval or chord from a random root, then pick what you heard from the row of answers. A correct pick lights orange, a wrong one is outlined with the right answer lit beside it, and the rail keeps your score, accuracy and current streak. Start on Easy with the intervals from a minor second to a perfect fifth, move to Medium for everything up to the octave, and to Hard to add the tritone or the seventh and suspended chords. Hear it again replays the same question as often as you need.
Ear training online: intervals
An interval is the distance between two notes, named by counting scale steps: a third spans three letter names, a fifth spans five. Each number comes in a major and minor, or perfect and diminished, form one semitone apart, and telling those apart is most of the work. The classic trick is to anchor each interval to a song you know: a perfect fourth is the opening of Here Comes the Bride, a perfect fifth the start of Twinkle Twinkle, a major sixth My Bonnie, a minor third the first two notes of Greensleeves. Descending intervals sound different and deserve their own practice, which is what the direction select is for.
Chord qualities
The chord quiz plays three or four notes and asks for the quality, not the root. Major and minor differ only in the third, a semitone apart, and are the first pair to learn. Diminished sounds tense and unresolved because its fifth is also lowered, augmented sounds oddly bright because its fifth is raised. On Hard the sevenths appear: dominant seventh wants to resolve, major seventh sounds dreamy, minor seventh is soft and jazzy, and the suspended chord has no third at all, which makes it neither major nor minor.
How to practise
Ten minutes a day beats an hour once a week. Keep to a level until your accuracy sits above ninety percent for a few sessions, then move up. Use Together to hear intervals as harmony, which is harder than hearing them in sequence, and arpeggiate chords with One after the other if a block chord is too much at first. Sing the interval back before answering; ear training and singing in tune reinforce each other, and a wrong answer you sang is easier to correct than one you guessed.
What the page does
The root changes every question so you cannot recognise a pitch, only the relationship. Notes are played by a soft triangle-wave synthesiser through the browser's audio engine; nothing is recorded and no microphone is used. Reset clears the score, and changing the quiz or level rebuilds the answer row and starts a fresh question on the next Play.
FAQ
Why does the answer row change when I change the level?
Each level draws from a smaller or larger set of intervals or chords, and the buttons show exactly the set in play so you are never asked for something not on the row. Easy has six intervals, Medium eleven, Hard adds the tritone to make twelve.
Is the tritone really an interval?
Yes: six semitones, halfway to the octave, called an augmented fourth or diminished fifth depending on spelling. It sounds unstable, which is why it was avoided in medieval church music and why it opens The Simpsons theme and Maria from West Side Story.
Can I train with descending chords?
Chords have no direction, but the playback select still applies: One after the other plays the notes as an arpeggio from the bottom up, and Together plays them as a block. Most people find the arpeggio easier at first and the block chord closer to real music.
Does it use the same pitch every time?
No. The root is chosen at random from about an octave in the tenor range for every question, so the only thing that stays constant is the interval or chord quality you are being asked to name. That is the point: you learn relationships, not absolute pitches.
Why is my score not saved?
The score lives on the page and clears when you reload or press Reset. Write down your accuracy at the end of a session if you want to track progress over weeks; the interval calculator on this site can tell you the size of any interval you want to look up.
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