Train your ear like a working musician.

What is ear training?

Ear training, also called aural skills, is learning to recognise what you hear: the distance between two notes, the quality of a chord, the key a song is in, the rhythm a drummer is playing. It is how musicians play by ear, sing in tune, work out songs, improvise, and talk about music with other players. It is also part of most graded music exams, as the aural test.

Like any skill, it grows with short, regular practice. Ten minutes a day does more than an hour once a week, because your ear needs repetition to fix sounds in memory. Prism's Ear Training Tools are built for exactly that: quick exercises on a real grand piano, with instant feedback, and your progress saved on your device.

Intervals: the building blocks

An interval is the distance between two notes. Every melody is a chain of intervals and every chord is a stack of them, so recognising intervals is the foundation for everything else. Many musicians learn them by linking each one to a familiar tune: a perfect 4th opens “Here Comes the Bride”, a perfect 5th is the leap at the start of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, and an octave is the first leap of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.

The Intervals exercise starts with a few clear, wide intervals and builds up to all 24, up to two octaves, including the compound intervals used in jazz: ♭9, ♯9, ♯11 and ♭13. You can hear them ascending, descending, or played together as a harmonic interval, which is harder and closer to how intervals sound inside chords.

Chords: hearing harmony

A chord's quality is its colour. Major chords sound bright and settled, minor chords darker, diminished chords tense, augmented chords restless. Seventh chords add a fourth note that gives each one a distinct character: the smooth major 7th, the bluesy dominant 7th, the mellow minor 7th.

The Chords exercise covers 43 chord types, from the four triads to 9ths, 11ths, 13ths and altered dominants, played block or broken, in inversions, and in close, open or jazz voicings. Related exercises train you to hear which note is in the bass (Inversions), how a phrase ends (Cadences), and how chords move from one to the next (Progressions, written in Roman numerals).

Rhythm: time you can feel

Rhythm matters as much as pitch. Its foundation is a steady inner pulse, which is why Keep the beat asks you to carry on at the same tempo after the metronome stops. From there you learn to recognise and write rhythms: Rhythm identification (pick the written rhythm you heard), Rhythm dictation (build it yourself from notation), and Tap it back or Read and tap (perform it in time and get a timing score).

The rhythm exercises cover simple time (2/4, 3/4, 4/4) and compound time (6/8, 9/8, 12/8), with dotted rhythms, syncopation, triplets and sixteenth notes at higher levels. Meter asks whether music moves in 2, 3 or 4, Groove and feel compares straight and swung playing, and Polyrhythms trains you to hear two pulses at once.

Dictation and singing

Dictation brings everything together. You hear a short melody and write it down, here by playing it back on the on-screen keyboard or a MIDI keyboard. A short cadence sets the key first, so you learn to hear each note in relation to the home note, the way musicians actually think. Two-voice dictation adds a bass line underneath.

Scale degrees trains the same way of hearing one note at a time, and Sing it uses your microphone to check your pitch as you match notes, sing intervals and sing scale degrees, with a live tuner showing how close you are.

How the pathway works

Not sure where to start? Open the Pathway. It has eight levels, from Absolute beginner (higher or lower, same or different, keeping a beat) through Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate and Upper intermediate to three advanced levels covering jazz harmony, altered chords, compound intervals and polyrhythms. Each level links to exercises that are already set up for it; aim for about 80% before moving up.

The Daily workout gives you fifteen mixed questions at your level, and Progress shows your accuracy, practice streak and weakest areas. Teachers can use the Exam builder to set an aural test from any mix of exercises, share one link with a class, or print the paper with an answer key and play the questions aloud.

Who it is for

Singers who want to pitch notes with confidence. Instrumentalists who want to play by ear, improvise or work out songs. Music production students who need to hear keys, chords and rhythm quickly. Students preparing for the aural section of graded exams. And complete beginners, including children, who are just starting to listen closely.

All 25 exercises

Start here

• Pathway: A guided route through eight levels, from first notes to professional.
• Pitch basics: Higher or lower, same or different, step or leap. The very first skills.
• Daily workout: Fifteen mixed questions at your level. Five minutes a day.
• Progress: Your accuracy, practice streak and weakest spots.

Pitch & harmony

• Intervals: Name the distance between two notes, up to two octaves.
• Chords: Name the chord quality: triads to 13ths and altered dominants.
• Inversions: Which note is in the bass? Root position to third inversion.
• Scales & modes: Modes, minors, pentatonics, blues and symmetric scales.
• Key & mode: Major, minor or a mode such as Dorian or Mixolydian?
• Cadences: How does the phrase end? Perfect, plagal, half or deceptive.
• Progressions: Write chord progressions in Roman numerals, borrowed chords included.
• Scale degrees: Hear a note in a key and name its scale degree.
• Perfect pitch: Name a single note with no reference.

Rhythm

• Rhythm dictation: Write the rhythm you hear, in simple and compound time.
• Rhythm identification: Pick the written rhythm that matches what you heard.
• Tap it back · Read & tap: Tap a rhythm back, or read one and tap it in time.
• Keep the beat: Keep a steady pulse when the metronome stops.
• Meter: Is it in 2, 3 or 4? Simple, compound or odd?
• Groove & feel: Straight or swung? Rock, jazz, funk or shuffle feel.
• Polyrhythms: Two pulses at once, from 3 against 2 to 7 against 4.

Dictation & singing

• Melodic dictation: Hear a melody and play it back on the keyboard.
• Two-voice dictation: Write a soprano and a bass line heard together.
• Sing it: Sing notes, intervals and scale degrees with a live tuner.

For teachers

• Exam builder: Build, share or print an aural exam with an answer key.
• Sound explorer: Hear any chord, interval or scale on any root.

Frequently asked questions