These are a few of my favorite apps...

Wednesday, December 14, 2022 by Alix Evans | theory

Have any travel planned this holiday season?  Music theory apps are a great way to keep yourself occupied on planes, in airports, or on long car trips while honing your skills!  Here are a few of my favorites:

Ear Training, by Musicopoulos - this delightfully simple app will take you through interval identification, as well as scale and chord identification in a very well scaffolded progression.

Music Theory, by Musicopoulos - this app teaches and drills the rudiments of music theory, including scale degrees, the circle of 5ths, chords, and more.  Like Ear Training, it's very well scaffolded, and offers exercises to make sure you master the concepts.  Unlike Ear Training, it also offers clear and in-depth explanations of music theory concepts.

Chet - Ear Training Games - this app plays increasingly complex melodies, which you then are asked to reproduce on an in-app keyboard.  It's a great way to start applying interval recognition and training your ear to know what it's hearing and singing.

Ella - Sight Singing & Reading - this app gives you short written melodies that grow slowly more complex, and has you sing them into your phone's microphone.  The app recognizes when you've sung the melody correctly and is able to point out any errors you might have made.

Interval recognition hacks!

Tuesday, November 29, 2022 by Alix Evans | theory

Some of my students are working with me on interval recognition - being able to recognize and sing specific intervals like octaves, perfect 5ths and 4ths, major and minor 2nds, 3rds, 6ths, and 7ths.  This is a great tool to have when learning to sight-sing!

One of the most common ways to remember what a specific interval sounds like is to associate the interval with a familiar song.  For instance, a lot of people associate the perfect 5th with the opening to the "Star Wars" theme (whereas my geeky self associates it with the opening to almost every song ever written by Hildegard of Bingen!  🤣)

Check out this Wikipedia page for an amazing list of songs that correspond to musical intervals!  It's almost certain that you'll find a song you know well for every interval.

(Also a note for the uber geeks:  the first entry for "ascending minor third" is "A Cruel Angel's Thesis," the opening song to the classic anime "Neon Genesis Evangelion."  Just in case you were wondering if there could be anything geekier than my Hildegard association - yes.  Yes there is.  Of course, NGE is one of my all-time favorite animes, and I do still have the lyrics to the opening song memorized in Japanese, so I'm not throwing any stones here!)