Theta Music Trainer helps you develop musical hearing

Filed under: Audio, Games, Education

I've always wanted to do something musical. But having received no musical education and not coming from a musically-inclined family, I find myself dreading the subject and feeling that it's all a bit too much for me. I'm speaking mainly of the theoretical side of it, which has to do with figuring out all of those scales and then telling them apart.

Theta Music Trainer has shown me that I might have a chance to grasp this music thing after all. It's composed of several Flash-based games, each of which is focused on an aspect of "educated listening." Here are three examples:

• Paddle Pitch trains your ear to recognize "scale tones." It's basically Pong, but you use the number keys to move the paddle, and you need to move the paddle to whatever sound was played.
• Melodic Drops plays two-note sequences, and you have to figure out the musical interval between the two notes (an octave, two identical notes, etc.).
• Parrot Phrases is by far the hardest one. The game plays sequences of notes, and you have to play them back by ear on a virtual piano, keyboard, or guitar.

In its free form, Theta Music Trainer is a very limited demo; it lets you play only the first level of every game. But if you pay $7.95/mo, you get full access to all levels. That's what it says on the contact page, anyway, but I wasn't able to find out how to subscribe.

The idea is very, very good, and the execution feels solid. So, even if Theta Music Trainer isn't quite ready for prime time, this is definitely one to keep an eye on for your musical training.

Theta Music Trainer helps you develop musical hearing originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 23 Oct 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

touch microsoft app gawker