I Tested Thousands of Musical Ears

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Hi everybody, welcome to Amy Nolte Music. I would like to show you what's been happening on my Instagram lately.

[00:00:05]I've kind of stumbled upon a kind of video that I've been making that has been um it's it's well it's been successful for me and it's also I think it's helped a lot of people to think more about their own musicality and about about the way that they think about music, which is really why I started my YouTube channel in the first place. Let me show you the first video.

[00:00:26]Try [music] something with me.

[00:00:29]Sing the major seventh of this chord of A-flat major.

[00:00:33]Can you [music] hear it?

[00:00:36]Hold it.

[00:00:39]Now drop it a [music] whole step.

[00:00:44]>> [music] >> Now drop it a minor third.

[00:00:48]Should be this note.

[00:00:51]Good, keep [music] it.

[00:00:55]Let me hear it.

[00:00:59]>> [music] >> Good.

[00:01:00]Keep that note.

[00:01:03]Now drop that [music] note a whole step.

[00:01:05]Should be here.

[00:01:10]Keep it.

[00:01:15]>> [music] >> Drop it a perfect fifth.

[00:01:19]>> [music] >> Hold it and if you're right, it should fit perfectly here.

[00:01:29]>> [music] >> Raise it a whole step. [music] Raise it another [music] whole step.

[00:01:43]Hold [singing] it and if you're right, it [music] should fit.

[00:01:49]Does [music] it fit?

[00:01:52]Good, raise it a perfect fourth. [music] Nice.

[00:02:00]>> [music] >> Raise it a whole step.

[00:02:07]>> [music] >> Raise it a half step.

[00:02:10]You should be there.

[00:02:13]Raise it a half [music] step again and see if you fit perfectly.

[00:02:18]>> [music] >> Was it fun?

[00:02:22]I hope you were following along. I'm going to read the comments, the very top comment to you because I frankly am really uh tired of receiving this comment and I want to address it today.

[00:02:32]Those perfect fifths got me. Okay, this was so lovely, but woah, going down a perfect fifth was not happening for my brain. I've learned that I can't pitch a perfect fifth. More, please. I like that spirit. I like I like the I can't do this yet, please let me practice it more spirit. I think that's amazing.

[00:02:51]Thousands and thousands of likes on these comments about the perfect fifth.

[00:02:55]All right, let's talk about why that is.

[00:02:56]Okay, the thing that I asked you to do, I asked you to sing this note. That's where we started, a D on a minor G minor chord.

[00:03:07]Then I said, "Drop it a whole step."

[00:03:09]Now, that's not that hard because you could just walk down and you could hear that.

[00:03:18]And then I said to keep it [music] while I completely changed tonalities. I changed from G minor 7 to A flat [music] major. And I said, "Hold it."

[00:03:30]Basically, the reason that I did that was because I know that that's a really nice change. Like to sing the the 11 on this G [music] minor chord and then to go to make it the third of an A flat chord feels really good.

[00:03:49]But now, I've [music] asked everybody to drop it a perfect fifth.

[00:03:54]And that's not easy to do because you're on the third of the [music] chord and I'm asking you to drop down to the sixth.

[00:04:02]It's here and it's not easy to hear.

[00:04:04]>> [music] >> But it's Ah, and then I say to hold it and I change to D minor 7 and then it should [music] fit perfectly if you did it right, but I have a feeling a whole bunch of people did not do it right. Now, what's the reason for this? Why is that so hard?

[00:04:20]This is my take on it. It's because when you learn intervals, you're learning them with reference songs. People might just say, "Well, gosh, all you have to do is think of The Flintstones."

[00:04:33]Right? And then you've got your perfect fifth because that's how everybody was taught. But it doesn't work unless you're in the key of F for The Flintstones.

[00:04:45]As soon as I change everything and I I I'm playing >> [music] >> G minor and then I change it to A [singing] flat and ask you to sing The Flintstones, it's it doesn't make sense anymore. It doesn't make sense to go Flintstones, [singing and music] meet The Flintstones, right? That doesn't make sense anymore from the third to the sixth of the A flat [music] chord.

[00:05:11]So, your reference song, like whatever it might be, it might be Don't You Forget About Me. That works great if you're in the key [music] of F.

[00:05:21]Or Hey Now, You're an All Star. It works great if you're going from five to one.

[00:05:26][music] So, fa mi re do, it works great. But the second that it's a weird, you know, mi [singing] re do ti la, it doesn't [music] sound the same anymore. It sounds completely different, which is why I made my video a year or two ago called you've been learning intervals the wrong way. I do think these reference songs are a fine way to start teaching people about intervals, like how to hear them, you know? But as soon as you get in the real world, like with different contexts, it doesn't it doesn't work anymore. It just doesn't.

[00:06:05]And this is going to bring me to my second video, actually, because the reason that people fail on the next video has to do with context.

[00:06:14]>> Keep your eyes closed and tell me if this chord is major or minor.

[00:06:20]>> [music] >> That one was minor. How'd you do? Keep them closed. How about this one?

[00:06:29]That one was major. Keep them closed.

[00:06:31]How about this one?

[00:06:33]>> [music] >> Also major. Keep them closed. How about this one?

[00:06:40]>> [music] >> That one was minor. Now, we're going to do the same thing with augmented and diminished. Keep them closed. Here we go. Is this augmented or diminished?

[00:06:53]That one was diminished. Try this one.

[00:06:59]That one was also diminished. Try this one.

[00:07:06]That one was augmented. Try this one.

[00:07:11]That one was diminished. Try this one.

[00:07:17]And that one was augmented. Now, we've got four options: major, minor, diminished, augmented. You tell me which one it is. Keep your eyes closed.

[00:07:27]It was minor. How about this one?

[00:07:29]>> [music] >> It was diminished. How about this one?

[00:07:38]It was augmented. And how How this one?

[00:07:41]>> [music] >> That's right. We end with the major.

[00:07:44]How'd you do? Here are the comments from that video. How do you tell the difference between diminished and augmented? I need to work on differentiated augmented diminished, but other than that I did awesome. Okay, now we're doing diminished and augmented.

[00:07:56]Queue my soul leaving my body. So when I'm playing you major chords even if I change [music] where they're at drastically, I mean that can be confusing.

[00:08:08]I throw in a minor one and most people know it. Most people who have studied a little bit can tell the difference.

[00:08:17]Just because of the happy sad thing.

[00:08:20]That's what everybody uses, you know, this sounds much happier than this does.

[00:08:24][music] Um, that does not it's not the same for everybody. Not everybody feels it like that or hears it like that. But as soon as I started throwing in diminished and augmented like that or >> [music] >> like that people couldn't tell anymore and that's where they got really messed up.

[00:08:43]And [music] I'm going to say that that's because you never hear triads like that just coming at you like willy-nilly, pell-mell, like just completely random thrown at you. There's [music] one, you know, like in music we never hear that.

[00:09:00]Like a song never starts on a diminished chord. A song never starts on an augmented chord. You guys, you know, try it you songwriters out there. See how you do.

[00:09:10]But But when we hear an augmented chord, it usually is following [music] a major chord.

[00:09:19]Our life [singing] together [music] is so precious.

[00:09:28]Together. [music] John Lennon did it. That's where we usually hear an augmented chord.

[00:09:33]We might hear it on da da da [singing] da da da da da da da [music] da da da da do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do [singing] do do do do do do Hooked on a Feeling, Ooga Chaka. We might hear an augmented chord in that context really often, and I would bet that if you were to hear in any key, it doesn't matter, and [music] then you heard it, a major chord followed by an augmented chord, you'd be like, "Oh, it's augmented." But [music] just to hear me playing some minor chords and some major chords, and then all of a sudden I just throw an augmented chord at you, your brain's going to go, "Whoa, I know that one sounds different, but maybe it's augmented, maybe it's diminished, and I don't really know." And same thing with diminished chords. When we hear a diminished chord, it's usually a passing chord.

[00:10:24]>> [music] >> That one always makes me think of uh When your body's had enough [singing and music] of me and you're ready to fall on the floor. Uh that's by Dr. Hook. That's how we usually hear diminished chords, and I have a feeling that if I were to just play you, you know, a whole bunch of random chords, >> [music] >> but I came to this, and then I did this, you would probably say, "That's [music] diminished. I can tell because it had a note that changed to this because of voice leading." And the same thing for when I went from [music] major to augmented, it's because of the voice leading and because it makes sense to your ears. [music] When I'm just randomly throwing crazy things at you like this, of course you're going to say I can't [music] hear the difference between augmented and diminished. And my only real answer was that when you're hearing them all random like this, diminished to me sounds like somebody's creeping up the stairs behind you like with a knife, right? Like, "Oh my gosh."

[00:11:26]Wherever Wherever you play it, "Whoo, crap, who's behind me?"

[00:11:30]Ah, you know? And when you hear augmented, it more to me sounds like you're just raising your eyebrow, like, "Ooh, that's a little curious."

[00:11:41]But, you know, there also there also could be a case made for this that that it also sounds like somebody's creeping up behind [music] the stairs because it it's a curious kind of sound, right? So, really I I don't see a ton of advantage to studying these chords in this way unless you're preparing for a test, you know, like an oral skills test or a dictation test and you're in college or unless you just think it's really fun, which might be the case, and I hope that that's the case, actually. But, more importantly, it it's it's key to learn to learn how these [music] things function, you know, and why we use [music] them and and how they can elevate your songwriting.

[00:12:32]All right, so if you're really working on being a musician, context is everything.

[00:12:36]If you are in music school and you need to be quizzed and you need to do well on it, context might not be everything.

[00:12:43]Your ear and little tricks and lots and lots of practice might be everything, which brings me to my next point, and that is SharpEar Trainer.

[00:12:53]This is an app that a friend sent to me recently that I've been using a lot over the last few months, and I've actually been helping him to develop it a little bit and giving him some ideas about how to make it better. Let me show you a few of the exercises and games that I really like. When you open the app, you'll see on the homepage a game called Guess the Note. In order to play this game, well, you have to turn your phone off of silent mode, that's the first thing. And then, you just tap to play, it plays you a note, and you have to guess what it is. This is kind of a perfect pitch training game.

[00:13:26]>> [music] >> I love the chord quality recognition game. This is where you can start very easy, kind of like I did in my video, and you can just do major or minor. Then you can make it more complicated. You can see here I'm playing with major, minor, major seventh, minor seventh, augmented, and diminished. And I'm just working on identifying the chord quality, and it's very random. Let's look at interval recognition.

[00:13:54]You've got beginner, intermediate, and advanced with all of these games.

[00:14:02]You can see that it keeps track of your accuracy above, and also your streak.

[00:14:06]Then when you go back to your home page, you can always see how much progress you've made, and your best streak, and how well you're doing each day, which is kind of fun. You can also see how many minutes you've practiced, and you can set a goal for how many minutes you'd like to practice every day, and it'll tell you what percentage of that you've hit. This is a crazy game called sharper or flatter.

[00:14:28]It plays you a note, and then you have to say whether the second note is sharper or flatter than the first one.

[00:14:33]And the advanced level of this is so hard.

[00:14:41]>> [music] >> Let's look at mode recognition. In this level, I'm trying to tell the difference between the Ionian, Phrygian, [music] Mixolydian, and Aeolian modes.

[00:15:01]>> [music] >> You've got a melody section, and a harmony section, and a rhythm section.

[00:15:10]And within each section, there are tons of exercises. Let's look at this chord progression one. This is chord progression recognition. It's got different options up there, and I have to say which one it is.

[00:15:20]You don't have to have perfect pitch for this. You just have to basically recognize, am I going from a major to a major or a dominant to a major? You know, that kind of thing.

[00:15:31]>> [music] [music] >> And let's check out some rhythm. This one's called match the tempo and it's very difficult and one that I spend a lot of time looking at.

[00:15:49]It just gives you a click and you have to say how many BPMs it is. Really good for drummers.

[00:16:15]Identify the time signature is a really great one. You've got a cool sounding beat and you just have to tell what the meter is.

[00:16:23]>> [music] [music] [music] >> If you're looking to get better at reading music, you can do read the treble clef and it just gives you a note and a keyboard and you just have to play the right note. That's it.

[00:17:05]It's also got a lot of tools. If you click on the tools icon down at the bottom, there's a pitch detector and this is kind of like a tuner. You can see a piano so you can actually use, you know, a little piano when you're on the go. There are also different backing tracks, so that if you have a song you're working on, you can just press play, but I really like the way these sound.

[00:17:26]>> [music] [music] >> I've been like I said, I've been playing it for months and I'm not tired of it.

[00:17:37]There's always more to do and I'm like, "Oh, I didn't notice this one before.

[00:17:40]I'm going to play this now." I think it's really, really fun. And the nice thing is that it gives you what I've been talking about today. It gives you random and it also gives you context.

[00:17:49]So, you can work on both parts of your musicianship. If you use the link that you can find in the description of this video with the code Amy 45, you can get the deal that you see here, which is a 45% discount. Normally, the Sharp Ear Trainer would be $8.99 per month, but with your 45% discount, you'll get it for $4.99 per month for 3 months and then $4.99 per month after that. It's available for both iOS and Google Play Stores. Thanks, everybody for watching.

[00:18:17]I'll see you next time on Amy Nolte Music.