Ear training

The daily ear puzzle

Five questions a day, the same five for everyone who plays that day: an interval, two chords, a cadence, and a short jazz line, all played on a guitar. Listen, answer, and see each one on the neck. Tomorrow brings five new ones.

How it works

The five follow the tracks of Drop2’s Ear tab, in its order. First an interval: a root, then a note above it, and you find the second note on the neck. Then a chord: its root sounds on its own, then the chord over it, and you name the quality. Then a chord you are told the name of, with one question about it: which of its notes is on top. Then a cadence, two to four chords in a row: does it come home, and how? Last, a short line over one or two chords: which one was it?

Each question offers five answers at most: the right one and four others, dealt fresh every day from all twelve intervals, all six qualities and the app’s thirteen lines. The lines are drawn on small fretboards, each note labeled with its degree, and the four others come first from lines over the same chords, then from lines of the same length — so the answer is something to hear, not to count or read. The top note keeps its three answers, and the cadences all five.

Each answer has its own speaker. Before you choose, it plays that answer the way it would sound if it were the right one, so you can compare — and, as in the app, once you have listened to any of them before choosing, a right answer counts as right with help. The strip at the top keeps the score in three marks: ● right, ◐ right with help, ○ wrong. Once you have answered, the speakers cost nothing: play the others, and the card switches to each shape as it sounds.

Nothing you answer is sent anywhere, and your answers are not kept: reload the page and today’s five start again. The one thing the page keeps is your streak — the last puzzle you finished, how many days in a row you have finished one, and your longest run — in your browser’s own storage, on this device only. The result you share is the strip and the score, nothing else.

Why the answers are on a neck

Every sound here is a guitar. The chords and cadences are the same drop-2 voicings the app’s ear trainer plays, on the middle four strings, with each answer voiced as close as it can get to what you heard — so when two answers differ, only the notes that set them apart move. The interval is answered on the neck itself, as on the app’s pad: the root is marked, and each answer is a circle where you would play the second note. Each of the five lines is drawn where a guitarist would play it, and the card under each answer shows where your hand would be. Hearing a sound and knowing its place on the neck are one skill seen from two sides, and the neck is where they meet.

Where Drop2 comes in

These are the questions Drop2’s Ear tab asks, one from each of its tracks: Intervals, Quality and Top note in Chords, Cadences, and Phrases. There they come one after another for as long as you keep answering, each track opening up in stages as you get its answers right, and none of it needs a guitar or the microphone. The line is the one question asked differently in the app: it plays the line and you tap it back on the neck, note by note. Here the puzzle stays at five a day — and the four kinds of line have an article of their own, each one played over its chord.

Next: Hear the six qualities side by side →