Ear training
Perfect pitch test.
You hear middle C once. After that you get ten random notes, and all you have to do is name each one. Get it exactly right for full points, land within a semitone or two for partial credit, and you see the correct answer every time.
Set this before you start. Headphones give the most reliable result.
How the scoring works
| Your answer | Points | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Exactly right | 10 | You named the note |
| One semitone off | 5 | One fret either side. Your ear is in the right place. |
| Two semitones off | 2 | A whole tone out. Still in the neighborhood. |
| Further than that | 0 | Not close enough to count |
Ten notes, so a hundred points is a clean sweep. Distance is measured the short way around, so answering B when the note was C counts as one semitone, not eleven.
What this actually measures, honestly
Perfect pitch, properly called absolute pitch, is naming a note with nothing to compare it to. That is what this test is aiming at, which is why middle C is played once at the start and then not again.
The replay middle C button is there because some people want to practice this way, but be straight with yourself about it. If you check the reference before every answer, you are measuring your relative pitch, which is working out intervals from a known note. That is a genuinely useful skill and far more common, it is just a different one.
Absolute pitch is rare, and the evidence suggests it is largely set early in life. Relative pitch improves with practice for almost everybody. If you score poorly here, that is not a verdict on your musicianship, and there is more that matters day to day in the pitch trainer, which tests how small a difference between two tones you can hear.
Getting a fair result
- Use headphones. Phone and laptop speakers roll off the low end and can make notes harder to judge for reasons that have nothing to do with your ear.
- Do not hum or check against an instrument. That is testing the instrument, not you.
- Answer on instinct. Long deliberation usually means you are calculating an interval rather than recognizing a pitch.
- Ten notes is a snapshot, not a diagnosis. Run it a few times before drawing conclusions.