r/eartraining

I’ve been playing guitar for around 27 years, and honestly for a huge part of that time my ability to play by ear was pretty bad compared to how long I’d been playing.

At the beginning I thought musical ear was mostly something you either had or didn’t have. But after a few years I noticed I actually was improving a little bit, so clearly it could be trained somehow.

The problem was that my approach was horribly inefficient.

For years I learned melodies and solos by basically searching for every note one by one on the guitar. Play a note, compare it, rewind the recording, try again. Repeat over and over until I finally got the phrase right.

Later I got into interval training. I learned all the usual “this interval sounds like the beginning of this song” stuff. It helped a little in isolation, but obviously it didn’t help me hear melodies naturally in actual music.

Then at some point I discovered functional ear training, and that was the first big breakthrough for me. Very quickly I started recognizing single notes within a key.

But after some time I also started noticing things that felt missing in the original app I was using.

One thing that bothered me was the constant jumping between keys, which made it harder for me to really feel grounded in one tonal center for longer. I also felt there wasn’t really a smooth transition from hearing isolated note functions into hearing actual melodies naturally.

Almost immediately I started getting ideas for exercises that I personally felt would bridge that gap better.

At first I tried building custom exercises inside the app I was using, but eventually I realized it still wasn’t quite what I was looking for.

So after a lot of experimenting and discussions with musician friends, I started designing my own exercises inspired by functional ear training and eventually built my own Android app around them.

That approach finally helped me build solid foundations for recognizing melodies by ear in a way that felt much more natural and connected.

I’m curious what it looked like for other people here.

What actually helped you develop your ear the most?

And how long did it take before you genuinely started hearing music differently instead of just guessing notes more efficiently?

I'm a guitar player and I want to learn how to play by ear, or play anything I hear. I've read up on the subject, and from what I understand, My approach is to figure out the song's key and scale, and then identify the root note or base note where the song rests or resolves. Is this method correct? Would you recommend practicing identifying these notes purely by ear without naming them? By that, I mean just spotting them across different songs, because I want to learn how to pinpoint exactly where they are as a starting point. At the same time, I would train to recognize notes sound in general using a specific app, like Sonofield, for example. What advice do you have for a beginner like me?

When first learning to hear and recognize intervals or chord tones, the root is usually treated as the reference point. A common ear-training drill might involve hearing the root against other scale tones—for example: root to 2nd, root to 3rd, root to 5th, and so on. Then you move on to hearing chord tones such as 1–3–5, or 1–♭3–5–♭7.

However, many bass lines use inversions or start on chord tones other than the root—for example: 3–5–1 or 5–3–1–7.

How do you train your ear to recognize intervals and chord tones when the root is not the first note you hear?

For example, if a line starts 3–5–1, 5–1–3, or 5–3–1–7, what keeps your ear from interpreting that first note as the root simply because it’s the first note played?

Any recommended apps or training for being able to sing out and recognize scale tones within chords? Be able to pull out and sing the arpeggios of chords? I’m a bass player wanting to play jazz, quickly hearing chord tones seems an essential skill for playing live.

I saw a YouTube video recommending to learn functional ear training (training to recognize notes as scale degrees in relation to a tonic) with moveable do as opposed to just drilling random intervals.

I got the functional ear training app and it's going well so far but should I try drilling random intervals as well? Or will I gain that knowledge just using the app?

When using the app I also name the specific interval in my head in addition to the solfege degree (eg: major 3rd and Mi).

Anybody used this app or have any advice for maximizing the utility of my practicing?

Thanks!

Hey folks, I’m longtime musician with a not great ear and bad singing skills. I’ve been doing Sonofield daily for about a month along with some other singing and listening practices. I’ve got three stars on all of the “Sun” path (major scale ideas) in the “Degrees” tab of Sonofield.

I’ve gotten much better at recognizing and signing intervals, but I still really just don’t hear notes in my head. For example, if a note or chord is playing and I want to sing a major second over it, I can match the root and then jump to the major second pretty well, but just thinking of the major second and then singing it directly feels like total guesswork still.

I notice this when I do the ”Voice“ tab in Sonofield but also in general if I’m trying to sing a song or write vocal parts. This makes it really tough to sing live or with other people. It feels like even with the improvements I’ve made with my ear, it’s not totally helping me improve at what I want to do with music.

Any thoughts on this issue? Are there things to practice to get better here? Would appreciate any advice, thanks!

I’m building a new feature for my ear training app and want a sanity check on the idea.

The concept is a bite-sized daily ear training challenge: each day everyone gets a new short music clip and answers a few focused listening questions, for example melodic dictation, interval identification, chord quality or inversion, and rhythm tapping.

The clips are AI-generated, but the point is not to present them as finished musical products. The idea is to use AI as a tool to create fresh, purpose-built ear training material with clear musical targets.

Does that sound genuinely interesting, or more like something you’d try once and never come back to?

Would the fact that the clips are AI-generated put you off if the exercises themselves were good?

My primary school teacher told me point-blank that I just "wasn't a singer." I actually believed her until last year. It is wild how a single comment like that can shut down a hobby for twenty years, but it turns out most of what we think is "talent" is just a mechanical disconnect.

If you have been told the same thing, you should know that you are probably not tone-deaf. Real congenital amusia only affects about 4 percent of the population. If you can hear when someone else hits a sour note, your ears are fine. The problem isn't your hearing; it is the coordination between your ears and your vocal cords.

Think of it like a feedback loop that just got rusty. You hear a note, you produce a sound, you listen to yourself, and then you adjust. Kids build this naturally because they make noise constantly, but adults often stop singing for decades and the loop atrophies. It also doesn't help that your voice sounds totally different inside your own head because of your skull resonating. You are basically trying to drive a car while looking through a distorted mirror.

The most useful thing I did to fix this was something called drone matching. I would find a steady note on a piano app or YouTube and sing an "ah" to match it. The trick is to listen for a "wobble" in the sound. When that wobble disappears into silence, you know you are perfectly in tune. Doing that for five minutes a day for two weeks closed the gap for me more than any music theory could.

Beyond that, I found it helps to stop trying to mimic singers who have a totally different range than your own. You have to find where your voice actually lives first. I also started recording myself and listening back the next day because fresh ears are way more objective than "in the moment" ears. Finally, stick to songs you know so well you could sing them in your sleep. If you are struggling to remember the words, you cannot focus on the pitch. It is all about solving one problem at a time.

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Hi everyone, I'm actively training my ear right now: transcribing songs by ear, plus using Functional Ear Training and Sonofield. The problem is I don't have access to a guitar at the moment. Can I temporarily replace transcribing on guitar with a piano app (virtual keyboard)? Will it still be useful for ear training, or should I just wait until I get my guitar back? I'm specifically interested in melody training.