I got some great user feedback about Scalar and this update attempts to help make using the app a lot easier. I fell into the trap of providing too many user settings, too much flexibility instead of a strong, easy to use interface. Regrettable. Sorry about that.
But the fix is in! Scalar and ScaleTrainer share some code which made it rather easy to introduce a series of screens to launch an exercise. A wizard, in software parlance. Ok, I know. Wizards are so 1990s! But in this case, I think it’s the right answer. When you go to start an exercise, the app guides you through the setup (single scale or set of scales? root movement? starting note?)
I hope you’ll agree this makes the app easier to use for first-time and long-time users, by making setup choices obvious.
Thank you for your support and please enjoy the updates!
Intervals are basic building blocks of music. All musicians should be fluent with them. Many see them as distraction from studying “music” or practicing their instrument. But I encourage you to regard studying intervals as a means to open up your musical mind. You can deepen your love of music by knowing more about the mechanics and having more of an awareness of the details of the music you hear.
Many people start off studying intervals by creating a list of intervals that are present in music they already know. This is a great way to strengthen the connections in your brain between something well-known and something new. Which tends to help you remember it!
There are many examples of intervals occurring as the first two notes (or important notes) of famous songs. You should create your own list of songs that you know well. This approach works best with songs that you know and love.
The Interval recognition entry on Wikipedia is quite excellent and contains a good list of both ascending and descending interval examples. Interval recognition – Wikipedia
Studying Intervals
First, let’s isolate the intervals and work on them in small groups. This helps to build a solid foundation which we’ll add to in subsequent steps.
Many people make the mistake of starting with ascending intervals and not spending equal time with descending intervals. Please avoid this trap! Start out your study using both ascending and descending intervals.
If you’re using Intervallic, go to the Settings page to configure which intervals to study. Simply adjust the switches to include/exclude intervals in the exercises. For this section, use “Two-Note” mode.
* Step 1: First Intervals
* Start with Perfect Fifth (P5) and Perfect Octave (P8)
* Step 2: 3rds
* Configure for minor and major 3rds
* Step 3: 4ths and 5ths
* Configure for Perfect 4th and Perfect 5th
* Step 4: 6ths
* Configure for minor and major 6ths
* Step 5: 2nds
* Configure for minor and major 2nds
* Step 6: 7ths
* Configure for minor and major 7ths
Combining Intervals
After you’ve built some confidence in hearing the above intervals, it’s time to combine them! It’s helpful to combine intervals based on their relations. There’s a bit of magic in intervals. If you invert a P4, you get a P5. That is, if you take a P4 (e.g., C-F) and transpose one of the notes by an octave (e.g., F-C), you’ll get a P5. Pretty cool. And pretty tricky for our ears sometimes.
Our ears/brains can easily transpose octaves. It’s the “same note,” just an octave away. But that can make things complicated when studying intervals – so I suggest combining intervals in the related pairs.
If you’re using Intervallic, go to the Settings page to configure which intervals to study. Simply adjust the switches to include/exclude intervals in the exercises. For this section, use “Two-Note” mode.
Step 1: 4ths and 5ths
Step 2: 3rds and 6ths
Step 3: 2nds and 7ths
Two-Note Exercises
This is the classic exercise to study intervals. Which makes sense because an interval by definition is the distance between two notes. The exercise is to play two notes and then identify the interval.
As written previously, don’t fall into the trap of focusing on ascending intervals and neglecting descending ones. You should have equal facility with ascending and descending intervals.
There are many ways to work on these exercises: alone at a piano or with your instrument, with a buddy who will play a series of intervals for you to identify or with an app like Intervallic which will never tire of playing intervals for you!
It’s also really helpful to do these exercises silently in your mind, perhaps while walking. The goal is to internalize this information and train yourself so it is effortless to hear the music. So working on intervals in multiple contexts will really help.
Intervallic has a auto-play mode where it will play intervals for you and speak the answers. This is a great way to keep your ears engaged fully. And works really well while walking to class or riding public transportation.
Three-Note Exercises
This exercise simply chains together two intervals. It’s a small step toward hearing intervals in real music. It helps develop your musical memory since you have to hold both intervals in your mind simultaneously. It’s a great skill to have.
One-Note Exercises
This is a great game to play with your friends. One person plays a note and tells you what note it is. Then they play another note and your job is to identify the new note. The way to do that, of course, is to recognize the interval and do the calculation to determine the note name.
For instance, person 1 plays a C4 and tells you they played a C. Then plays an Eb4. Now, you hear the interval as a minor 3rd, do the musical math to determine what note is a minor 3rd above C, and finally answer Eb!
You may want to limit the types of intervals to include in this game when getting started. Slowly adding intervals as you improve.
Intervallic fully supports this exercise type and has a auto-play mode where it will play the notes and speak the answers. This is a great way to keep your ears engaged fully. And works really well while walking to class or riding public transportation.
Triads
Being able to hear/identify triads is also an important skill. Identifying their quality (major, minor, diminished or augmented), root and even their inversion. This can be quite challenging but it’s a really great way to stretch your hearing.
Intervallic has settings to select the qualities and inversions.
Seventh Chords
Being able to hear/identify seventh chords is also an advanced skill. Identifying their quality, root and even their inversion. This can be quite challenging but it’s a really great way to stretch your hearing.
Intervallic has settings to select the qualities and inversions.
I wish you great success in your musical study!. Have fun and please send me a note at tom@tingjing.com if you have questions or comments.
The initial versions of Scalar were clearly designed for advanced students and professionals. With the latest update, we added basic triads. Ok, we probably should have started with these but…well…sometimes you just excited a write the advanced features first. It’s more fun!
Anyway, to work with just triads press on Ear Training or Practice buttons. While there, press the Settings icon in the upper-right corner. Scroll down a bit and select the triads you want and deselect the other chords.
Now your exercises will be using triads. It’s fun to add more advanced chords to the mix later on and incrementally improve your ear training skills.
Jazz Ears is designed to assist with ear training for improvising musicians. This app lets you interact with chords and scales in unique ways.
Dual Chord Mode places two chords next to one another. This approach can be very helpful in navigating between chords. In some cases you might focus on the common tones between the two chords/scales. This is useful for building fundamental skills and improving your ability to improvise over a chord for extended periods of time. The goal, for many, is to be able to improvise freely within the chord sounds. Of course, more advanced players will enjoy playing outside the chord sounds and exploring the tension that produces.
Clusters is a great way to exercise your ability to improvise over unexpected sounds. Here, the app will challenge you with randomly generated clusters (2-note, 3-note or 4-note) and morph them through the selected root movement. This is a great way to improve your hearing and response time to surprising chordal sounds.
JazzEars provides a complete, interactive play along environment which makes practicing fun!
A few years ago I released Scale Syllabus, an app for browsing scales. It was one of the first apps I ever wrote. Pat Harbison, professor at Indiana University and long-time friend, suggested I release an app using David Baker’s famous ear training exercises. Excellent idea! And an excellent reason to bring Scale Syllabus into something more useful.
I reimplemented the app using Swift 3 and AudioKit. This is a really nice and enjoyable language/toolkit to work with. It was great fun to revisit David’s ear training book, write algorithms to generate the exercises and have some fun dynamically generating MIDI sequences.
I’ve been upgrading the audio engine under the Chord Rotator app. I think this version is a lot better (far less latency!) and cleaner (dig the new UI!).
This version dropped the “follow” pitch shifter in favor of three “real” rotators. The un-effected signal can be mixed via the Mix Balance knob.
The three rotators rotate sequentially through the five columns. The blue dot indicates which step is currently playing. That’s useful when debugging or practicing with your settings.
Speaking of settings, press and hold the preset at the bottom of the screen to save. You’ll get a bit haptic feedback (just a little vibration) when it saves. I think it’s a reasonable feedback mechanism. Certainly doesn’t get in the way of anything.
So, v2 is a major upgrade in terms of audio quality, stability and usability. I’ve been practicing with it and having a blast. Literally. 😉
I’ve been quite busy of late. One of the things I’ve been working on are several more apps for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices.
The Scale Syllabus app is designed to assist improvising musicians learn their scales and work on applying them over chords. It is a complete study assistant where you can see, hear and play along with all the jazz chords and scales. This app lets you interact with chords and scales in unique ways.
This app transposes for all instruments and includes a play along mode where you can make music over the chord and a metronome.
It is a complete environment for learning jazz scales and chords.
I’m very happy to announce the release of DronePlayer for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch!
DronePlayer is a fun, interactive practice assistant for improvising musicians. Playing over extended tonalities is a great way to develop your ears as well as your musical ideas.
Long, sustained tones are generally known as drones. Drones have proven themselves quite useful for practicing. Many people use them to assist with intonation. Some enjoy playing scales over them. I personally have found them useful for practicing improvisation and improving my ears.
Muting one of the drone voices is a great way to play with just a fundamental pitch. You can then improvise over this and focus on hearing how what you are playing relates. Adding a second drone voice just adds to the fun.
Rotating DronePlayer to landscape orientation invokes a Drone Sequence mode where you can play evolving tonalities. These are excellent for challenging your improvising skills and having fun while doing so!
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