Interval Ear Trainer
Two notes play, you name the distance. Start on three intervals, unlock the rest, and the ones you keep missing come back more often.
The round
- Start quiz picks an interval from the pool — weighted towards the ones you have been missing, see Adaptive weighting below — and a random starting note between MIDI 55 and 72 (G3–C5), so you learn the distance, not one fixed pitch.
- Tap any answer button to submit. You get an instant verdict — a tick and "Correct", or a cross and "Not quite" — and the right button is outlined in green even when you got it wrong.
- Replay plays the same question again, unchanged. Reference note sounds just the starting note on its own, which is the fastest way to re-anchor your ear.
- Compare lights up only after a wrong answer: it plays the interval you guessed, then the interval it actually was, from the same starting note. That side-by-side is the part that teaches.
- Next question moves on and plays straight away.
Direction
- Ascending plays the root, then the note above it. Descending plays the root, then the note below it. Harmonic sounds both notes together. Mixed chooses one of the three at random every question and tells you which one it used.
Session: Journey, Practice, Sprint
- Journey is the default and the one that builds an ear. You begin at Level 1 with three intervals only — Major 3rd, Perfect 5th and Octave — and every level adds two more until all thirteen are live. The pool is set by your level, so the preset buttons and Edit pool sit out until you switch to Practice.
- To unlock the next level you need 10 correct out of your last 12 answers at the level you are on. The bar under the level map fills as you get closer. Levels you have already cleared stay clickable, so you can drop back and re-drill an earlier set whenever you want.
- The six levels: L1 Anchors (M3, P5, P8) · L2 Steps (+M2, P4) · L3 Minor hues (+m3, M6) · L4 Tight & wide (+m2, m6) · L5 Sevenths (+m7, M7) · L6 The lot (+P1, tritone).
- Practice hands the pool back to you: the four presets and Edit pool work exactly as before, no unlocking, no gate.
- Sprint 60s is a race. Press Start 60-second sprint and questions come one after another on their own — answer, see the verdict, and the next one plays about three-quarters of a second later. When the clock hits zero the round stops and your correct count is compared with your best. Sprint uses whatever pool Journey or Practice last left in place.
Adaptive weighting
- Every interval carries a weight. Get one right and its weight drops; get one wrong and its weight jumps, so a missed interval is picked far more often than one you always nail — up to about ten times as often once the gap is wide. Weights drift gently back towards even as you keep getting things right, so nothing is punished forever.
- The intervals currently being pushed at you are named under the accuracy breakdown, and their tiles get a thicker outline. This applies in all three sessions.
- The interval you were just asked is temporarily down-weighted so you rarely get the same one twice in a row — but it can still happen when the pool is small.
Musical context
- Isolated is the bare pair of notes with nothing around them. Hardest, and the classic drill.
- In a key plays a tonic triad first, lets it clear, then plays the interval from a note inside that key. Having a tonic in your ear changes everything — this is how you actually hear intervals in music.
- Fragment buries the interval in a short 3–4 note phrase. The interval is always the last two notes of the phrase; the notes before it are small stepwise moves leading in. Closest to reading a melody by ear.
- Replay repeats the whole thing including the context. Reference note always gives you the bare starting note of the interval, and Compare always plays the two intervals stripped of context, so the comparison stays clean.
Tone colour
- Piano is a struck stack of partials with a fast decay, Strings is a richer, slower-swelling tone that sustains, and Pure is a bare sine with no harmonics at all. Pure is the most exposed and often the hardest; strings blur the two notes together in harmonic mode. Train on more than one — an interval you know on piano can vanish on a sine.
Song hooks
- After every answer, the strip under the grid names a well-known tune that opens with that interval, ascending and descending, with the direction you just heard highlighted. Full list further down this panel.
Pool
- The pool controls are live in Practice and Sprint. In Journey they are greyed out because your level decides the pool.
- The four preset buttons restrict what can be asked: All 13, Perfect only (P1, P4, P5, P8), Perfect + major, or 3rds + 6ths.
- Edit pool turns the answer grid into a set of on/off switches — tap intervals to include or exclude them, then press Edit pool again to go back to answering. Intervals outside the pool show a dashed border and cannot be picked. Two intervals is the minimum.
- Reset score wipes the score, both streaks, the per-interval breakdown, the adaptive weights, your sprint best and your level progress — it puts you back on Level 1. Direction, context, tone colour and volume stay as you set them. Everything lives in memory only: nothing is saved, and closing the page starts you fresh.
Keyboard
- Click the widget once so it has focus, then: Space replay the question, Enter next question.
- Answer with the key printed on each button: 1–9, 0, then Q W E. The keys renumber themselves to follow the pool, so 1 is always the first available interval.
- ← → ↑ ↓ walk the focus across the answer grid; Enter or Space on a focused button submits it.
- R reference note · C compare · N next question · P replay.
- In Sprint, Enter starts the clock, and once it is running it skips to the next question instead of waiting for the auto-advance.
- The six level chips are ordinary buttons, so Tab reaches them and Enter drops you back into any level you have already cleared. Locked levels are disabled and are skipped by Tab.
- Arrow keys are left alone while the volume slider has focus.
Semitone table
Pitches are equal temperament: f = 440 × 2^((MIDI − 69) / 12), so A4 = 440 Hz.
Song hook reference
Each interval below is paired with a widely used tune whose opening leap matches it — ↑ for the ascending version, ↓ for the descending one. Titles only: hum the tune you know, then match it to what you just heard.
Tips
Drill your worst two, not all thirteen. The breakdown above marks your weakest interval once you have a few answers logged, and the adaptive weighting is already pushing it at you. If you want to go further, switch to Practice, turn on Edit pool, leave only that interval and the one you keep confusing it with, and run twenty rounds — then put everything back. Tritone against perfect 5th, and minor 6th against major 6th, are the usual culprits.
Change one thing at a time. When an interval feels solid, do not jump straight to the full pool — keep the pool and switch the tone colour to Pure, or the context to Fragment, instead. The same interval in an unfamiliar setting is a different exercise, and it is where most of the real progress happens.
Simply hit the Start quiz button and listen to the first pair of notes that will begin your learning journey. Alternatively, if you are working fast, you could try using your computer’s keyboard instead. As each pair of notes plays, the widget prompt you to identify what interval it represents. In other words, how far apart are they?
There is three modes available which are all designed to support your ear training journey at different stages. They range from rapid practice to gradually moving forward.
How to Use the Ear Training Quiz
At the heart of the interface is the answer grid. There’s one button per interval. From left to right, they goes from Unison to the Octave. On each button is written both the interval name and number of semi-tones that it contains. To make selection fast there are also tiny letters printed onto the buttons representing the keyboard shortcut for each. They are listed below. The keys are 1. 9, 0, Q, W, and E.
Once you make your selection, the widget instantly respond with feedback. If right, it will show a check mark and highlight the button green. If wrong, it will highlight your selection red. Then it shows correct answer outlined in green. There’s even a Replay button that repeats back what was asked. There is also a Compare button. It plays your guess first, then the answer. This lets you compare them side by side. This comes in handy as you’ll learn which intervals sound more alike. Major third and minor third for instance.
There’s also a Session control, which governs the flow of the quiz. In journey mode, you begin with just three simple interval. As your accuracy increases, you will unlock more and more. To move up levels, get most of your recent answers right. With practice mode, you can choose whatever intervals you want to see in the quiz. That way, you’re always working on the areas that interest you most. And in sprint mode, you’ll be challenged to answer as many questions as fast as you can. For this one, you’ve got a minute on the clock.
The direction setting determines which note is played in relation to the other. In ascending mode, it will play the lower note first and then the higher note. For descending mode, it does the opposite. For harmonic mode, it plays both at once. Finally, mixed mode varies which direction to play for every question. This forces you to understand what the interval is no matter how they present it. You can see dots appear beside the verdict area that correspond to the direction in which the notes were played.
To add the surrounding harmony, you need to consider musical context. Mode in key plays a tonic chord before the interval. It provides your ear with a tonal reference point. Isolated mode plays just the two notes of the interval. That’s the hardest and most traditional approach. And Fragment mode embeds the interval as the conclusion of a short melodic phrase. That simulates how intervals might appear in real songs.
It changes the sound quality of the instrument for the notes. The natural decay and standard percussive tone of piano. A warmer, sustained sound from strings. That blends the notes together in a smoother way. It is a pure use of a simple sine wave with no harmonics. It strips away tonal color. This leaves only the pitch to be detected by the frequency distance. Changing timbres allows you to know if it’s an interval on any instrument. It is not just one that you have practiced on.
A volume control manages the overall output level. It is good for your listening conditions. The slider allow fine tuning so the audio remains clear without being overwhelming.
With practice mode, there is pool editing so you can turn specific intervals on or off. If you are having trouble with some interval, you can leave them out and concentrate on those that you do know well. Or if you want to put all of them in to realy have at it, you can do that as well.
And it’s keeping score of how you’re doing, session by session. How accurate are you? What is your longest streak? What is your current streak? What are your intervals broken down per interval? Which ones did you miss? Those show up in a red border so you can see right away what you need to work on most. And the app adapts, so the intervals you miss most frequently is counted more heavily than others. That way you get more practice at things that trip you up.
When you forget what note you started on, use the Reference note button. It will play just the first note in the interval. Then you can mentally sing or hum the next note. From there, you figure out how far it is away.
Following every answer are song hooks. These connect the interval to a popular tune. That tune starts with the same leap. This links the quality of the interval to something you know and remember.
The system makes learning easier with keyboard shortcuts. Tap Enter to move on to the next question. Tap Space to play the active question again. Use arrow keys to tab through the answer grid and pick out answer intervals, no mouse required. Tap R to display the reference note. Press C to view how your guess compares to the correct answer.
Settings are remembered by the widget. Next time, it will resume exactly where you left off.
Begin in Journey mode. Allow it to gradually lead you into the intervals. As you get more accurate, it will unlock harder challenges for you. When you feel like working on certain areas of weakness, go into Practice mode. If you’re ready for the whole pool, test yourself there too. Use the comparison tools as much as possible; they’ll make you a better player.