Any you ever used Earmaster? Looks like it could be pretty useful.
I’ve used pitch/interval trainers before, I figure it can only be a good thing, but having said THAT, according to Rick Beato it’s too late as an adult to achieve perfect pitch, we can only have relative pitch; though a worthy goal in itself.
A bold statement by Rick but he backed it up, and made a video about how he kinda stumbled into teaching his young son perfect pitch when Rick realised that his very young son Dylan was equating pitches from Rick’s keyboard to the music themes of movies he’d heard.
He also took up the challenge laid down by those who disputed his assertion, but they couldn’t refute.
And in fact I can add some circumstantial evidence to that assertion i.e the best by far musicians in my hometown had been musically trained in the Catholic School there from the very start of their school years, around age 5.
One result of that training was how fast these guys, friends of mine, could pick up tunes in detail and reproduce them at very high quality, virtually indistinguishable from the original. The only thing that was beyond them was virtuoso type stuff, Angus Young for example.
The public school that I went to had nothing like that and no one in that school including myself could sing or play well.
I could definitely use some good structured practice in better hearing sequences of intervals, chord tones, and rhythms and writing them down. I can of course trial and error my way through rock tunes a few notes or chords at a time for learning songs note-for-note and get them scratched down in tab roughly in time to the beat. I would like to eliminate a lot of the trial and error though, as well as be able to better read and write rhythm. The latter is mostly down to lack of practice with dotted notes and ties. And I have put in some time too doing interval ear training, but probably not enough of it or in a meaningful way to make it more practical to real-world music listening and transcribing. I think isolated interval training only takes you so far, and not so far as interpreting whole lines in one go. It’s one thing to easily hear a Major 3rd, and another to hear a complete line involving Major 3rds and play back that line without a lot of back and forth trial and error.
A couple of years later I’m trying Earmaster. I never tried any sight-singing, so hopefully I don’t kill anyone in earshot.
The differences between Earmaster and other ear training software seems to be in the progressive exercises for pitch matching, interval identification, rhythm identification, sight-singing, and dictation, rather than being left to work all that out for yourself with provided functions. Maybe some of the other software provides progressive exercises to cover all these aspects too, but I haven’t spotted anything else yet. I was actually looking for a good book or two on ear-training and sight-singing, and I was really reluctant at using any app for ear-training. Available books look pretty rough going without some kind of feedback from an instructor. The exercises in Earmaster look to be pretty well thought out, progressive, and a lot of them. After trying it a bit I’m much more optimistic. And so far I’m glad that I didn’t go with books. Having feedback via singing and clapping into software seems like a real benefit when going at it without an instructor.
The included beginner course is super rudimentary which can be blazed through in an hour or two, but I was surprised at how crappy I am at the first exercise of random pitch matching (already improving after a few sessions). A random note is played within the configured vocal range, and you sing that note back. I was also surprised that my vocal range is from E2 to D5, which is nearly 3 octaves. But I sound like a yelping dog half the time when hunting for pitches. And it would have been nice if EarMaster included a function for finding your vocal range. But it didn’t take long to work it out with a chart of American Standard Pitch Notation.
The included general workshop looks to be pretty comprehensive, and I can see spending a lot of time practicing the included exercises.
The vocal trainer is a progressive sight-singing course. It is included in the subscription or bought separately as an addon for the perpetual license. I paid the $5.50 for a month subscription to see how useful the whole program seems to be, and I’m pretty impressed so far, despite a few minor annoyances. I think I’ll likely pay for the perpetual license for windows and the vocal trainer.
The included jazz course looks to get into more real world music examples, being a progression of the general workshop.
Then there are RCM voice and Aural Trainer for ABRSM courses, which look to be similar to the vocal trainer and general workshop but meeting academic requirements. These look to be redundant for people who aren’t students of those organizations.
I could probably use a general beginner singing resource too (course, or whatever) to learn something about breathing, warmups, etc., but I haven’t spotted anything that looks compelling yet. If any of you have spotted a good resource on singing I would like to hear about it.
My goals are to better navigate the guitar fingerboard via pitch and intervals, easier/faster transcribing (and in standard notation), and to not sound like a yelping dog when singing due to pitch and interval hunting. So I’ll see how it goes over time if I’m able to squeeze in steady practice time and stay committed to it.
No resources, but I always remember hearing that MJ would warm up his voice for about half an hour before recording. It’s good to know that kind of factoid because it’s easy to record our voice and think that’s it when the pros wouldn’t dream of it.
Although I also read that Roy Orbison would just hum and noodle and then just break out into full Orbison when the red light went on. So not a universal rule but I defo can’t do that.
Yea, being warmed up to some degree on any instrument definitely helps. Vocal wise, getting warmed up isn’t my biggest issue. I have a functional voice (definitely not of front man quality) that can at least get the notes out in reasonable pitch and time when I know the song well. But it takes me too long to get to that point, and during the process I’m doing a lot of pitch hunting. But it would definitely be good to learn some proper warmup exercises, etc., to help with getting going with less effort.
My voice has gone to the dogs.
Used to have such a sweet voice 
Think it is time to think about warm-up exercises
Nobody ever paid me to sing. But I have been offered extra if I promised not to.
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A terrible bass player once told me that I am tone deaf. And he was right at the time. I was definitely not born hearing pitch, which seems strange, because I hear all sorts of other smaller things that seems to slide by other people.
If you spot anything good, drop a mention of it.
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I would have offered a few singers that I have played with a $20 to knock it off.
I can sing. I had a throat infection years ago and it lowered my voice considerably. I recorded Ae Fond Kiss by Rabbie Burns it sounded pretty good due to my infection altered vocal chords. I’ll Post it if I can find it
I sounded like Barry White last year when I had an infection, I should have recorded something. Next time…
Yes indeed. It was a one in a lifetime chance 
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Ok. The honeymoon is over with EarMaster. Bugs are making it a pain to use. I’m looking to see what else is out there.
On the free side, Teoria looks worth exploring.
On the commercial side, Auralia and Musition look interesting.
I’m not a fan of the ear trainers that only play black, intervals, for example, without requiring vocalizing what is being played. That feels too passive. Vocalizing really helps to better internalize what is being heard.
Perfect Ear looks pretty good. It doesn’t look to be as extensive as Ear Master, but it also doesn’t look to be riddled with bugs.
I’ll ask what our teachers use or recommend. Not really up on that side of things myself.
There seems to be a lot out there these days to wade through. Hearing what a school is using might turn up something interesting.