These are all good exercises that help you build a solid foundation, but they can sometimes cause motivation to dip being somewhat clinical in nature.
So what I usually do is compile a list of melodic hooks from popular songs my students enjoy. Every so often, we’ll play them and let the student try to pick them out on the piano or their instrument of choice. I find that the satisfaction they get from being able to recreate a familiar pop‑culture melody really helps spark their interest in getting better at playing by ear, which in turn motivates them to stick with the exercises.
Shameless plug but I built a unique game specifically to help some of my more classically trained friends get better at playing piano by ear.
It's a free piano game in the style of the old "Simon" toy which presents players with increasingly longer sequences of musical notes and challenges them to reproduce the sequence using either an on-screen piano or connected MIDI keyboard. It also works with acoustic instruments through the mic.
Just testing out practice mode, I found what I really wanted was to be able to stay at a certain level until I felt I was getting good at sequences of that length, not immediately get pushed to the next level every time even when it took me 8 tries to get the 4-note sequence right. Give me a chance to feel like I'm improving! Don't just keep giving me harder things when I keep struggling with the existing ones.
It already has that feature! :) It’s just not very obvious. If you click the small lock icon near the top, it will snap and to that difficulty so you can practice only sequences with that specific number of notes.
This is so well done and very cool. Thanks for building it and offering it.
As someone who hasn't had a piano lesson in about 40 years, I find myself wanting to play with the keys to match the melody. So I hear the initial melody, and then I'm practically hitting keys at random (guessing where I should be on the keyboard) until I find the first note, and then I have to listen over and over again while trying to find the second note. I kind of want to hunt and peck until I'm ready and then get tested to see if I nailed it.
Glad you like it! A couple of people have asked for this feature and I guess I've been struggling with how to fit this concept into the game.
Maybe the answer really is just as simple as a little visual toggle that puts you in a "sandbox" mode where all the sounds still go through, but the game doesn’t respond to them until you untoggle it.
Another approach is having an "explore and test" or "Training Wheels" mode. Correct notes played by the user behave exactly as they do right now. But for a wrong note played by the user, instead of the round ending, you could just gives some audio-visual feedback that this is not the right answer but continue to expect the user to find the right answer. This way we can hunt and peck our way to the end of the round.
This creates a problem in that it's easy to muddle your way through without learning anything. To prevent this:
Once it gets to the end of the round in this mode, if the user had even 1 wrong note selected in this round, the game will then expect them to play it perfectly once again (like it does now).
This way you get both the hunt and peck exploration and the final "now that you've had your time to get your ears and fingers in order, play it correctly."
Put me up as another person wanting that feature, it was how I expected it would work.
same!
For https://www.asmusictheory.com, I built in a spaced repetition test section to aid memory retention, along with "a free play" mode for when you just want to explore.
No sound on an iPhone. They keyboard visually responds.
Tried safari and Firefox focus
Thank you for your feedback - I have it working on iPadOS 26.5 (Chrome and Safari). The browser auto-play policy does require some interaction with the page before it will play (so the first key press is often mute, but should sound after). There is a button on the control bar to enable sound explicitly. I will look for more instances (not to ask the really obvious question, but do you have sound turned up or a bluetooth connection you're not aware of by any chance?). Thanks again
looks fantastic, just what I was looking for. will try, tyvm
Thank you. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated :)
This is amazing! A couple things:
1. Doesn't work on Firefox because of compatibility. (Web MIDI could not be enabled: DOMException: WebMIDI requires a site permission add-on to activate index-C82-1cwq.js:10:56869 doInitialize https://lend-me-your-ears.specr.net/assets/index-C82-1cwq.js... ) . Might be worth detecting browser and telling users straight up before they waste any time.
2. How did you come up with the melodies? Hand crafted? AI? Asking because I plan on building this for Gitori(www.gitori.com) at one point and my original idea was taking snippets from MIDI files of famous classical pieces/jazz solos
Also, TIL about the Simon game. Might buy this for my 6 year old :)
Nice!
My wish list for this:
1. Even the practice mode has a high bar as it expects me to get the whole thing right in the first shot. It should let me try some before jumping to tell me I got it wrong and automatically playing it again.
2. Show me the first key of the sequence and have me figure only the rest. Why: When I hear the note sequence, I cannot pick the absolute scale, only the intervals. So I practically always get the first key wrong, which then goes to #1 above.
May be there are some settings related to the above. I could not find if there.
Hi alok-g,
I'm going to be implementing number 1 - a "playground" that lets you sort of plink around until you're happy. I've gotten a number of requests for this.
The second request has me a bit confused, so I may be misunderstanding.
Under “Note hints” in the options, there are three different modes for practice. In all of them in Practice Mode, the very first note of the sequence is always shown in standard sheet notation. Then depending on the "Note Hints", you can basically change the exercise from an ear training exercise to a sheet reading exercise.
If you change Mode from Practice to Simon, even though it doesn't show the first note - it's always the root of the signature - e.g. if it says G Major, then the first note of the sequence is always G. I should probably make that more clear.
Does that description line up with what you’re seeing?
>> ... the very first note of the sequence is always shown in standard sheet notation.
Oh, the sheet notation! I can't read that :-), so had completely ignored it.
I would like to see the same notes on the piano roll!, say as labels on the keys "*1", "2", "3", "4" (the same options could control the visibility).
Oh! I completely hadn't really thought of that. So maybe what I could add is an option in the settings where it lights up the first note on the piano roll.
In the meantime you can open the piano roll and set the "Show note labels on key" in the settings so that when it shows the key signature at the top "G Major", you can match it with the corresponding note label.
Great! I had turned "Show note labels on key" already, but had not known that the label at the top tells me the first key. :-) Thanks.
First of all, thank you for making it free!
I'm completely new to ear training. Could you give some advice on what a newbie should think while doing this? For example, should I try to sing the thing in solfeges in my head, or it's considered bad practice? And if I do, should I sing the first note as Do?
So the only problem is that until you've internalized the intervals a bit better, you might get frustrated trying to sing out solfege since you might say "re" when the note was "mi" in the context of the key signature and that might reinforce a bad intervalic relationship. However you could still hum/whistle the pitches as an assistive tool.
If you’d like to make things a bit easier, you can go into the options and restrict the key signature. That way you can keep it simple and just practice in a more common keys like one major scale like C major and its relative minor, A minor.
Where I really recommend "singing" out each note is when I'm teaching my students to improvise on the piano since it creates a sort of intentionality about what you’re about to hear and sing.
For example, if they had a chord progression or melodic idea in mind but accidentally played a wrong note, they’ll notice right away because what they’re singing won’t match what they’re playing.
Whereas if you don’t sing or whistle the notes as you play your instrument, you might not notice that you’re drifting off from what you actually intended to play because within the confines of the key signature it might still sound melodically acceptable (if that makes sense).
> So what I usually do is compile a list of melodic hooks from popular songs my students enjoy. Every so often, we’ll play them and let the student try to pick them out on the piano or their instrument of choice.
As someone who had ongoing formal musical training from childhood through university, I can attest that multiple teachers used a similar technique, focusing on finding a group of commonly-heard melodies such that the first intervals encountered in them cover as much of the set as possible.
Haven't tried the game yet, but looking forward to checking it out later to see if I can offer it to some of my friends who want to learn music better!
I remember in jazz class the instructor had a stack of jingles that showcased particular "weird" intervals. The only one I really remember now is the "Alway Coca Cola" jingle and a M6, but this was a _long_ time ago.
Yes! "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" is another popular one for demonstrating a major 6th.
Side note but I'd love to see a nicely printed stack of physical cards with popular melodic hooks/jingles, the demonstrated intervals, notation, etc.
This is really simple and great!! Thanks for not stuffing it with ads.
Is there a way to make it work a bit better for phones? On mobile Safari, just tapping to enable sound doesn’t seem to work until I reload and tap again.
This is quite a nice idea and works well, but I think I would rather spend the time listening to and imitating real Miles Davis solos etc.
This is very fun!
I think this is smart. I have never done ear training apps because I just don't like to learn music that way - it doesn't "stick" for me.
I like to learn in the context of a song. Here's what a melody sounds like when you start it over the 1 of a chord. Here's a melody when you start it on the 3 over a chord. But, again, in the context of a known song.
I just don't think "non-musical" exercises have ever moved me forward as a musician, if that makes sense.
I’m with you. I rarely use mechanical drills, even though I recognize that they can sometimes have value (cough Hanon cough), especially when you’re focusing on ergonomics. I tend instead to focus on things my student already enjoys, because it gives them a grounding.
Another trick I like to do is take a popular song, rip out the melody, and keep the chord progression. Then I’ll usually scaffold a nice accompaniment using Band-in-a-Box so the student has something looping in the background while they try to piece out the original melody themselves on their respective instrument.
That can sometimes give them more guidance, since it locks them into a specific key signature and helps them feel the flow and explore the space.