Big Ears

http://www.ossmann.com/bigears/
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Among jazz musicians, someone with very good ears is said to have “big ears.” On that thought, the Big Ears website is a simple online ear training program that’s completely free. It quizzes the listener on intervals by playing a random interval with a random starting pitch. The listener then must choose which interval was played. The training is meant to improve interval recognition skills of anyone that tries it. The listener has complete control over the difficulty level. Such as, the person can choose the number of intervals that the program will pull from in the quiz; beginners can choose fewer possible answers to make it easier and advance at their own pace.

The process is stress free; listeners are allowed as many guesses as they need. To have access to the applet that runs the program, one’s browser must be compatible with Java and have Java installed. The notes are all sampled with a real piano, so the sounds don’t sound digital or articifical. The website and applet have been around since 1996 and is still so useful; this is a skill set that doesn’t change in importance or significance with time and really will stay with one forever.

by Olivia Lin