Ear training is the most essential as it helps you to develop your audio receptors. Audio reception is very important in the case of people who create music as the more you listen, the more creative you get. Sound engineers, DJs, producers and musicians can have the upper hand in their field of expertise by proper ear training. Once you develop a clearly perceiving attitude, mixing, writing, making or learning music becomes easy.
Tools are a really important part of the training as bad tools mean unpleasant experience and ear training becomes hard. The most common misconception regarding ear training is that it is all about listening. It is not true. Listening is also a very important skill. It means chord progression recognition is a skill acquired only by people who took ear training seriously and focused on effective hearing. That is the major breakthrough hurdle in ear training.
1.Quiztones Android / ios
It is one of the top-grossing ear training apps which helps in sharpening the ears. Elimination of problematic frequency is taught by the app. Critical listening is the key priority of the app. It brings forth drastic and overwhelming improvements in your sound perception skills. It is the best app for musicians and sound engineers to help them boost their mix. It works on the ‘search and destroy’ mechanism that helps you figure out uncanny beats/parts of your mix in order to eradicate them so that the mix you made turns out to be better. It is available in the Google play store on Android and App Store of iOS.
Though it is an all-round ear training app, guitarists are to be benefited the most by it. It involves more of a challenge than training to help improve sound perception. It requires no internet access and is a completely offline solution for ear training. It helps you practice and develops your skills anywhere and everywhere. You can create customized challenges for yourself and make high scores to beat them further. It costs $3.99 in the Apple app store but, it is worth it. Its most useful feature is it figures out your weak spot and provides you with intensive training to improve it.
It is undoubtedly one of the oldest and most effective ear training apps. It is sleek and has a classic training interface. It is suitable for music students the most. It aims at teaching ‘traditional musicianship’. It has a record usage I the highest number of music schools in the world and has received awards from many of these esteemed institutions. It is currently at version 7, and till date, it hasn’t let any user down. It provides rhythm training, sight-singing, ear training and also music theory. University of London and Berklee College of music have awarded this app for its contribution towards the betterment of music as well. It is available on all platforms like Android, iOS, Windows, MAC OS and Linux.
4.Teoria Android / ios
It is quite evident that the quality of this free resource is top-notch as it has made into the top five of rankings where most of the apps are paid. It is an all-in-one platform as it provides tutorials, takes tests and has a section dedicated to reference. It has elaborate articles, intricate music theory references along with tutorials and exercises for ear training. The exercise of harmonic function offered by Teoria is very effective as it gives identification and creation exercises for triads and seventh chords.
5.TrainYourEars Android / ios
This is one of the most capable apps available in the market for ear training. Its speciality is its ability to design training programs targeting your weak spots. This custom training comes into action after the app conducts certain frequency memory tests with you. It develops perception skills and increases the speed of the learning procedure. It develops your EQ and is available on Mac and PC along with AndroidAndroid and iOS.
6.Soundgym Android/ ios
It is a very effective aural training and resource application for Sound engineers. It provides extensive quizzes on sound location, gain differences, stereo impression and types of EQ filters, frequencies and many more. As the name suggests, it acts as a gym for your ears as it trains it. It tracks and analyses your problems. It has a vast catalog of things to offer to its user. It has 8644 learning points, 38 workouts, 456 games and also provides the best online Audio education. It emphasizes communication and learning. All the features combined together in better and faster learning. This also belongs to all platforms. It has apps for Android and iOS as well as web access from any device you feel free with.
7.Good-Ear.com Android / ios
This platform though never changed to modern apps and is only accessible by browsers in every device, is still among the best ear-training platforms till date. The website looks as if it came out in the year 1999 and has still managed to maintain a spot in the hearts of sound engineers around the world for many years now. It looks quite basic but is completely free. It is not a platform where you pay to access the training and content. It is extremely generous and requests for donations on the very starting page. If you decide not to pay, it doesn’t even pop up in the middle of the training or accessing resources.
8.EarPlugins Android / ios
It is not an app but as a VST plugin. It is a great mean of frequency training. It is free of cost. It is available only for windows and was coded by MS Visual Studio for personal use by Flemming Nyboe but, getting appreciation from his colleagues and other professionals, he launched it for public use. The application gives immediate feedback which is detailed. You can see the numbers and know where things are going wrong, and you can also hear the pitch/chord problems. It runs on VST2.4 Stereo for 32-bit Microsoft Windows operating system.
9.MyEarTraining Android / ios
This is quite a good app and has a wide variety of ear training skills to provide. It trains you with exercises involving scales, chords, intervals and solfege or function. It has specific features that cost money, and many features are free as well. For example, Interval training is both harmonic and melodic with ascending and descending feature up to the 15th double octave. It also has daily exercises which refresh every 24 hours. It also provides reports of performance for you to figure out your weak spots and strengths. It is available for both Android and iOS.
10.Functional Ear Training Android / ios
It is very crucial that a musician knows what he/she is hearing. It helps you in developing the quality of the music composed by you, recognize intervals and transcribe melodies. It also boosts your musical strengths, and with proper grip over your ears, you can play a tone without notes just by hearing it out. This claim by the app is confirmed by the reviews and ratings by the app users. It is available on play store as well as an app store.
11.Perfect Ear-Music Theory, ear and rhythm training Android / ios
This is a very compact ear training app available on Android only. It is extremely beginner-friendly, and all the training that costs money is also very cost-effective. It is a value for money app. It is free but has in-app purchases.
12.Complete Ear Trainer Android / ios
t is also an Android, and iOS are supporting app. It is very innovatively designed with great content. It makes learning fun as it has a working mechanism like a video game. Every section present on the app has its own and unique intro tutorial to help you with the process. You can compete with your friends by sharing scores as well.
13.Piano Ear Training Free Android / ios
This is also an app for both Android and iOS. It is very well laid out, and its special attraction is the chord identification challenge. Its interactive games make it interesting to learn, and it is especially helpful to pianists or keyboard players.
14.Solve Android / ios
This app is available on the web, Android and iOS. It is also a very user-friendly application. It is easy to use and is well designed with appealing color themes. It has more than ten training module lessons to help you with the identification of many things, like intervals and chords.
15.DAW Android
It is one of the best transcription apps available in the market. It enables you to download a song and put very small parts of it on loop in DAW so that you can transcribe it by using your ear. The best strategy for newcomers using this app is to play the songs at a 50% slower rate. This would buy you time to perceive the tune and figure out things about it.
So, we figured out the importance of ear training and what purpose it might serve to us. It is very necessary to train our aural receptors so that we develop the habit of keen and careful listening as well. Effective listening is the key to mastering the art of transcribing songs. It is very helpful for budding musicians and sound engineers.
