0
votes

I am developing my aural skills and in Ron Gorow's Hearing and Writing music it is suggested that learning to sing an interval will help internalise it.

Is there an iOS app I can sing into which will tell me what interval I just sang or played?

3
  • 4
    The best app I've found is called: An Acoustic Piano - they are found in practice rooms, recital halls, houses, restaurants, music stores, and maybe even your home some day. They are easy to use: 1.) Sing an interval 2.) Play the piano 3.) Did it match? 4.) Lather, rinse, repeat. Jan 25, 2015 at 18:12
  • For some reason, I can't find it anywhere on the App Store.
    – piofusco
    Feb 1, 2015 at 9:27
  • 1
    Plenty of piano/keyboard apps on the App Store.
    – Mr. Boy
    Feb 3, 2015 at 14:39

4 Answers 4

2
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If you know your musical alphabet well enough to know what note a 3rd/4th/5th/etc above/below your starting note is, then a simple tuner will do. Sing your first note and then try to sing an interval and see how you do.

A tuner will also demonstrate how close you are to a note and how much you wobble around.

A free piano app (basically a touch-screen keyboard) can be used too. Sing your first note from a key, then sing and hold the second note and see what note on the keyboard it matches.

1
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If you really insist in using an app for that, I suppose you could use a guitar tuning app, at least to some extent. Adjacent strings of a guitar have intervals of perfect fourth and major third, depending on the strings.

But personally I think a stringed acoustic instrument would work well, if not the best (Gorow suggests acoustic instruments, too, for the drills he suggests in his book).

A couple of possible reasons I can think of are:

  • Acoustic instruments produce a detailed sound, there's no electric circuit in between to cause any distortion. This could help in learning faster what's unique in each interval.
  • You get useful physical association as a bonus. Holding and tapping a phone is probably less useful in music than playing a piano or plucking a guitar.
  • You aren't limited to the specific function of the app. For example, if you use guitar, you could listen to intervals, melodically and harmonically, compare them, sing against sounds you play, play chords and melodies and relate your singing to them.

And some extra points in favor of guitar, against a piano (in my experience):

  • You can walk around, sit and move during your daily ear training "meditation". Sitting extended times in front of a piano could be less comfortable.
  • You can more easily tune your strings if you want to experiment with intervals and sounds.
  • You can even take the guitar really close to your ear if you wanted, again, to get a varied experience of the sound.
  • Guitar is less bulky, and cheaper.
0
votes

There is an app that does exactly this. It is called Singers Studio by Erol Studio.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/erol-singers-studio-voice/id502780186?mt=8

-1
votes

Check out the interval singing app here: https://www.risingsoftware.com/apps/

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