Better Ears - Ear Trainer App Reviews

Within three days of buying this App my ability to identify the correct forward interval jumped from the 60% to 90%range and more importantly I know which ones I need to focus on thanks to the statistics. Im looking forward to learning reverse intervals too now. This seems like a pretty solid App to me - definitely worth the $$.

Great at what it does! Could have more features, and it crashed my phone. 5 stars!

Heres the real deal. It is a music ear training app. None of it sounds real or authentic like a real piano. As a result of this app, it is possible to de-tune your ear to what true notes, chords and scales should really sound like. The developers would really need to improve on the quality of the samples of the piano recording in order for this app to be affective. Acoustic piano players will immediately be turned off by the quality of the midi recordings. However, with the proper updates on sound quality, this app can be very useful. I do understand that this will mean a larger file size for the app, and careful sampling of a real piano is not an easy thing to achieve. A possible solution is to merge their app with roland or synthogy. Practice dont make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Sincerely, IronMicey911

This app works like it is supposed to. I wish there were higher quality piano samples though. Possibly a melody and rhythm test added to it would make it stand out among the other music apps. This is a quality app, not sure if it is fully worth the money.

For any theory student working to improve any sort of ear training - this is a challenging yet entertaining tool. Anyone hesatant to purchase should consider the fact that there are likely far less useful versions of this same basic idea for your computer that surely would not be much cheaper if at all - and thats not even taking into consideration the convenience of practicing intervals on the bus. For the developer- only thing that really bothers me is the quality of the samples. A more natural sounding piano or a clearer instrument in general would be so helpful. sometimes

This app has been incredibily helpful with my college ear training classes. The piano sounds are pretty bad. I havent tried the others, but the piano doesnt sound natural. Please update to better piano sounds! Please! And maybe add some rhythmn excercises and melodic dictation? With that included, I would not mind spending another $15 and would find this app so much more useful! Good so far and has so much potential. Please build upon it and make it even better!

Intervals are limited to the 8 (if you count prime and octave as 2) steps of the diatonic scale, that is, no minor, diminished, or augmented intervals. Chords and other features are similarly rudimentary. Might be helpful to child beginners, but much too limited for musicians. All in all, very disappointing, especially conisdering its high price. The interface is ok, but the content falls far short of usefullness.

Just to refute- some people say that you cannot test tritones, min6, etc. You can test any interval up to a maj13th. Under level select individual and pick any interval you want. Chords are the same. One review said you cant do dom7th chords... not true. You can test some very obscure chords.

Pitch doesnt go below C2 Poor sampling Rarely upated Too expensive

Overall a very useful, well designed app. Works great for drilling intervals and chords. You *can* drill all intervals up to a 13th, all the church modes along with all kinds of other scales, and just about every possible (certainly every commonly used) chord. Criticisms though: -As other reviewers mentioned the quality of the piano sounds is absolutely terrible. I guess its cool that there are a few different sounds to pick from, (though I dont really see much use in them, really. I mean, who wants to use an electric bass sound to drill chords?) but Id gladly sacrifice those options in favor of good (or even just better) piano sounds. Theres really no excuse for this in this day and age when there are tons of great sounding sample based keyboard instruments out there to be had. -The range selection really isnt of much use. Once you get very far to either extreme range-wise it gets a lot tougher to differentiate pitches. Especially with such lame sounds (not to harp on that point). -The "Tempo" and "Pitch" sections seem pretty useless. How is guessing random notes and tempos going to help anything? Youd have to spend an eon doing that to develop perfect pitch. Some sort of rhythmic or melodic dictation would be much more useful. -It would also be very useful to have a chord function/harmonic progression test of some sort, even a very basic one. -It would be nice if you could set the level for each individual test. Despite these minor (ha!) issues, this is really a great app and Ive been using it a lot. With a few improvements itll be indispensable. Highly recommended.

Its a good app but since Im in orchestra can u make it to 442 for the pitch like options to choose between 440~442 thanks

If you add some things. First please add 7th chords!!!! Also, please add the ability to select which groups of chords or intervals to work on. 5 stars if you add this!!!

Good overall - It could be nice if the sounds were better. Also perfect pitch practice would add to the application.

The program was great at first But now its driving me crazy Its gotten so glitchy Please fix the sound stuttering I cant even play chords anymore

I bought this thinking it would be the end-all-be-all app Id need for ear training on my iphone. Im on a 3G, so its a bit slower than the newer models, but ive used other ear training apps before so i figured this wasnt some crazy app powerhouse that would bring my phone to its knees like some of the newer games. I was very wrong. This app is so crappy that whenever i try chord identification exercises, the sample of the chord playing skips so much that i can barely hear what the chord is. This makes karajan effectively useless for me. I tried resetting my phone even to clear the RAM. nothing. this app is absolutely terrible, much like my title states. I am very disappointed, and am sorry i cannot get my $15 back for this exorbitantly priced debacle.

UPDATE: The newest version seems to have slowed down for me. Definitely not a fan of that. Im not sure what was improved besides the color change. Otherwise, I love this app. I have already quizzed myself on literally thousands of pitch intervals (not kidding, my count is 2308). The best part, and what makes it such an effective learning tool is you have full control over which intervals to quiz yourself on so you can drill down and focus on whats giving you trouble. Focus on 6ths and 7ths one day, 2nds and 3rds the next. One request: Melody ear training! Pitch intervals are much harder to identify when theyre in the context of a melody line. I resort to other tools for this, but they dont offer the awesome control that you guys do! Love the app. Extremely useful!

Great lil app with lots of resources. Its rote learning, but its all wrapped up in one neat package wherein you can set up your own lessons and training. That said, there seems to be one little glitch (maybe just on my iPod) where the program freezes upon changing the chord selection (to 7ths) in the "difficulty->individual" section. It worked before so hopefully its not a big deal, but Im sure itll be fixed in a future update. Happy Training!

Completely useless piece of garbage. I cant believe I paid 15 bucks for this. The sound is all messed up, the chord function doesnt work.

thx

This is a great app for any musician. It is difficult to find enough hours in the day for ear training, practice, and time to listen to recordings. This app gives me the chance to capture some ear training time while on the go. I use it on my lunch hour. I have not had an ounce of trouble with its speed, sound, etc. I like that you can individualize the settings. One can work on major scales/chords or the entire range of scales/chords including minor/modes/etc. I wish I had had this app in college. Theory is a necessary evil in my mind and I am very glad I have this to help me out!