Interactive
Interval Ear Trainer
Hear an interval, name it, see it on the staff. Thirteen intervals, three levels, ascending, descending or played together — no sign-up, nothing to install.
No answers yet
Why intervals have to be practised by ear#
Every other part of written theory can be worked out on paper. Intervals can too — count the letter names, count the semitones, check the quality — but that skill only becomes useful when you can also do it in the half-second before the second note has finished sounding. Sight-singing, taking dictation, tuning to another player and working out a tune by ear all depend on naming a distance you have heard, not one you have measured.
That is the one thing a printable worksheet cannot rehearse, which is why this page exists alongside the interval worksheets rather than instead of them. Use the trainer for recognition and the worksheets for spelling and notation; they are two halves of the same skill.
What each level contains#
Easy — unison, major 3rd, perfect 5th, octave. Four intervals that sound nothing like each other. The point of starting here is not that they are simple to spell, but that mistaking one for another is almost impossible, so you build the habit of answering quickly.
Medium — adds major 2nd, perfect 4th, major 6th and major 7th. These are the remaining intervals of the major scale measured from its tonic, so everything you hear at this level is a distance you have already sung countless times inside ordinary melodies.
Hard — all thirteen, including every minor interval and the tritone. This is where the real work is, because it introduces the four pairs that learners actually confuse.
The pairs worth slowing down for#
| Pair | What separates them |
|---|---|
| Minor 3rd / Major 3rd | One semitone. The minor sounds closed and inward, the major open. If you can hear the difference between a minor and a major chord, you can already hear this. |
| Perfect 4th / Perfect 5th | Both are stable and hollow. The 4th feels like it wants to resolve; the 5th feels finished. |
| Minor 6th / Major 6th | The hardest pair in the set. Most people find these easier descending than ascending. |
| Minor 7th / Major 7th | The minor 7th is the relaxed one, the major 7th leans hard on the octave above it. |
| Tritone | Six semitones, exactly half an octave, and the only interval that sounds the same inverted. Unmistakable once heard a few times. |
A well-known tune whose opening leap matches the interval is the standard way to anchor these: the first two notes of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star are a perfect 5th, of Here Comes the Bride a perfect 4th, of Somewhere Over the Rainbow an octave, and of The Simpsons theme a tritone. Pick one reference per interval and stay with it — the tune matters far less than using the same one every time.
Ascending, descending, together#
Start ascending, because that is how intervals are taught, notated and heard in most melodies. Move to descending once you are steady: the same interval falling is genuinely harder to name, and it is the direction that shows up when you are working out a bass line. “Together” plays both notes at once, which removes the melodic contour entirely and leaves only the quality of the sound — this is the mode that transfers directly to hearing chords.
How to practise#
Short and often beats long and rare. Ten minutes with the trainer, aiming for a streak rather than a total, does more than an hour once a week. When you miss one, play it again before moving on, and say the name out loud — naming it aloud is what links the sound to the word.
When the answer appears you also get the interval written on the staff, so the sound, the name and the notation land together. That spelling follows the proper rule rather than a chromatic guess: a tritone above C is written F♯, not G♭, because the interval spans four letter names.