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Review: MidiTec Earmaster 2.0

By Warren Sirota

Here’s a cool program that gives you nine different categories of ear-training drill, each extensively customizable, that you can try out for 30 days for free. It’s not my dream of the ultimate, perfect ear-training program giving you everything you ever wanted, but if you decide to buy it, you get quite a treasure chest of customizable drills for less than $40 US. That’s quite a bargain.

To be sure, the drills are fairly dry. It’s all: /Play New Question / Play Again / Press Answer Button / Flash Green For Correct And Red For Wrong/Lather, Rinse, Repeat/. Given that premise, the variety of drills is substantial. Categories are:

  • Chord identification
  • Chord inversions
  • Interval identification
  • Interval comparison
  • Scale identification
  • Melody dictate
  • Rhythm imitation
  • Rhythm reading
  • Rhythm correction

In each of these categories, you can specify exactly which musical choices you will be presented with, allowing you to work on things that are just a little beyond your comfort zone at any point in your development - a good way to learn. For example, in chord recognition exercises, you can specify which chords to play, whether they’re arpeggiated – and if so, whether ascending, descending or both - etc. On the other hand, you are left a little on your own because there is no guide here through exercises of progressive difficulty that build on previous skills – it is up to you to map your own road. I have noted this to be a common characteristic of all the ear training programs that I’ve encountered (although I’m sure there are exceptions).

I found some of the tests to be more valuable than others, but there is such a great variety here that the number of useful tests is well worth the price. If you have an interest in ear-training programs, you owe it to yourself to at least check out the demo.

Earmaster 2.0: http://www.earmaster.com/

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