EarSkills app for iPhone and iPad

Ever get lost when jamming with the band? Do you find yourself struggling to learn your favourite song, unsure of how all of the notes fit together? Do you want to compose new songs?

If you are a musician, Earskills is for you. The game focusses on common musical patterns that form most modern rock and pop songs. These songs are best described through major scale chord progressions. Dont worry if you have no music theory, the core focus is to train your ear!

Earskills presents you with two training modes: individual notes and chords. When you have selected a mode, a note is played and you must guess which one it is. Usually 2-3 possible notes are compared at any one time, so you can learn the way two notes in the major scale sound together.

This repeated "testing as training" reinforces common song patterns. This allows for "note hunting" on the piano to be much easier as the brain has already been trained to recognise different notes. Any aural training you do contributes to a strong ground in a life long career in music.

Purchases and Training settings:
The game has two in-app purchases, Notes and Chords -> each 1 hour of training content depending on the tempo set by you. You can try each mode for free with a tutorial module that is a simplified version of the main training sets. A timer setting allows you to have quick daily sessions of 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes and Loop (no time limit). Daily training quickly adds to your understanding and experience and repeated over a couple of weeks to months aids long term memory.

Technical Notes:
The app uses a midi synth library to create the 5 instruments - Classical Piano, Synth Keyboard, Bass/Guitar, Flute and Trumpet. Be warned that midis instruments dont sound as good as the real ones - for that you need a real instrument! The octave setting is useful for getting the right sound - a low octave of 2 works great for the bass, a high octave of 5 works best with the flute. The piano, trumpet and synth keyboard can be played in all octaves. The chord training mode will work best with high octaves of 4-5.

The app is structured to allow you to change the key, octave and instrument to suit your training needs. The different keys are C, E, G, B, F, D, G and A. The major scale chords for each key is expressed as I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii, VIII. That is 1st (major), 2nd (minor), 3rd (minor), 4th (major), 5th (major), 6th (minor), 7th (minor) and 8th (major).