Rather than trying to memorize which pitches is in any given chord, this Chord Quality Ear Trainer asks you to listen to how each type of chord sounds: its distinctive sound. By playing a chord based on a randomly chosen root note each time around, it encourage your ear to notice the intervals that establish the quality.
You can either control the trainer with your computer keyboard (for speedier workflow) or your mouse/trackpad. Feedback is instant and you’ll hear where you were right/wrong. Each of the chord quality buttons has a little symbol or number on the top right-hand side of the button that corresponds to the number on your computer keyboard. Use the number row to select the first nine qualities, then zero for the tenth, the minus key for the eleventh, and the equals key for the twelfth. Once you unlock a quality in your progression, these key combinations stays the same for all chords of that type. Additionally, if you wish to hear current chord again rather than go to the next chord, simply hit the space bar. That way you can listen to the chord as many times as necessary before making a decision about whether it’s correct or not.
How to Use the Chord Trainer
Within a session, you control the flow of audio with main transport controls. Pressing the play button will sound the current chord, which might include a short key-establishing cadence if you have enabled that context feature. If you’ve enabled the context feature then this is what you hear as well. Pressing the reference root button sounds just the bass note of the chord, allowing you to get a feel for where you are before making a guess. Once you’ve chosen an answer, the next chord button activate and clicking on it loads and plays another question.
Below this area on the stage is a comparison panel if you’ve chosen the incorrect quality. It displays the correct answer along with the chord you guessed, highlighting which notes is different between them. You can then press the compare button to hear both chords played again in the same root and voicing (side by side). I think this is one of the best ways to develop your ears as it isolates exactly what’s causing the confusion. As you listen, visual highlight guides your eyes toward the different tones.
Below the comparison panel is a settings grid for adjusting type and level of the training. For example, you can toggle the playback mode between arpeggioed chords (rolling up from the bass note) and block chords (all notes sounding at the same time). Next, the context offers options for hearing the chord either on its own, with a tonic cadence played before it (to establish the key). Finally, you have the option to vary the voicing to include root position, inversions, open voicings, or drop-two arrangements. That way, even if the notes is stacked differently, you know what quality is being played.
There are three options for synthesiser tones here, which sound like they’re intended to be realistic instruments. Strings sounds warm and sustaining; the piano one sound like a quick strike with a bright attack. The pure version is based on a basic waveform that eliminates the harmonics (overtones). You hear only the main note, which is harder to identify because there is no hint of the third. If the sound level is not suitable for where you are playing, turn up or down the master volume slider.
There are six levels that step by step increase the difficulty of chords. It begins with major and minor triads then adds seventh, suspended, augmented, and diminished chords once you reach a high enough hit percentage on your last few attempts. Because it’s learning from how well you’re doing, it will show you the qualities you’re missing more often and fewer of the ones that you’ve got nailed down. If you find yourself not recognizing some chord types quite so well anymore, don’t worry, simply drop down to a previous level at any time and drill them.
For more fun there’s a sixty second sprint option that lets you do some timed drills for practice. When you click start, it will start playing chords quickly. Every time you get an answer right, it move on to the next round automatically. It does not count towards your stats for your normal rounds but keeps track of how well you’re doing in sprints as a separate score. You can even go back and do them later, and they do lock the level map when you are in a sprint so you won’t accidentally mess with the difficulty levels.
To dig deeper into the stats, take a look at the table below (the breakdown table). This is where you’ll find out how accurate you were playing each chord quality. It also shows which quality you most often confused it with. If there’s a particularly troublesome quality right now, it will be labeled as such on the drill chart beside it. With all this information you can spend some time practicing those pesky tricky intervals.
For those who don’t want to rely on the mouse, the training process is made easy with keyboard shortcuts. When guessing incorrectly, hit the letter R to hear the reference root note followed by the letter C to activate the comparison audio. Hit the letter S when you’re up to the challenge to begin or pause the one-minute sprint mode. It’s also fully accessible for keyboard-only users as all buttons and sliders can be tabbed through.
The detailed reference guide featuring semitone intervals and chord formulas opens up from the help button at the bottom of the page. If you’d like to learn about the theory behind chords as you practice, this will be useful to you.
To get fully immersed in the training, you can enter fullscreen which removes any distractions around the page and puts the trainer full-screen on your computer. Work through the first few levels, perfecting them before progressing onto the more difficult extensions and seventh chords. When you’re feeling confident enough, hit play and hear how it sounds.