An ear training app for chords and progressions

These are real questions from section 1 of the app, played on the same recorded piano. Tap play, listen, answer. The explanation comes after, never before.

Interval training is useful and it is where Tonalia starts. But a song is not a list of intervals. It is chords moving in a key, and the skill that helps you write and play is hearing what a chord does: that it is the dominant, that it is borrowed, that the bass just fell a fifth.

So the questions grow from intervals into triad qualities, the seven chords of a key, cadences, seventh chords and whole progressions. By section 2 you are hearing secondary dominants; by section 4, tritone substitutions.

Every question is heard. There is no staff to read. Questions play a recorded grand piano, and you answer in the words musicians use: plagal cadence, V7/vi, Dorian.

Every answer is checked. Exercises are generated by a music theory engine, and each answer is verified by recomputing it. Spellings are correct for the key, so the third of B♭7 in D♭ major is D, not E double flat.

It is built to be opened daily. Five minute lessons, a streak, XP, hearts, and skills that come back for review on a schedule that stretches as you remember them.

Six sections: one key; minor and modal mixture; modes, including the melodic and harmonic minor modes; extensions and substitution; voice leading and modulation; arrangement. Section 1 is free forever. The rest is one subscription.

See the whole curriculum on the home page, or read how to hear chord progressions by ear.