Functional Ear Trainer vs Amsel

Have you (or maybe one of your friends) ever wanted to learn to transcribe or play music by ear? It is so important for a musician to know what you are hearing. A good musical ear helps when you are composing, improvising, transcribing melodies, or playing with others. Most likely you have already tried different programs to learn to recognize intervals or even to acquire perfect pitch. However, although such programs develop your ear, but can you actually play any melody you hear as soon as you listen to it? Imagine you could understand music... It is like when somebody is talking to you, you not only hear pleasant sounds, but you recognize words and their meaning. One day I came across Alain Benbassat's program called "Functional Ear Trainer" and have been using it ever since. It is based on Alain's method to learn to recognize tones. The main difference between the Functional Ear Trainer and other methods is that it teaches you to distinguish between tones in the context of a particular musical key. You begin to recognize the role (or function) of each tone in this key, which is incredibly similar to its role in other keys of the same scale. And it is *guaranteed* anyone can gradually develop this skill. It does not matter: - who you are - an absolute beginner in music or a virtuoso professional musician; - how old you are - a 3 yo kid or a 90+ adult; - what musical instrument you play (you don't even have to play one). The only requirement is to practice for 10 minutes a day. I was so excited about this ear trainer that I have developed a mobile app based on the Alain Benbassat method. I hope you will find it useful.

Amsel – Train your Voice* is designed to help you quickly and easily warm up your voice for speaking or singing. Do a wide variety of speaking, breathing and vocal exercises in 15 minutes or less. Our favorite features include: - a database of 360+ exercises, sorted into four difficulty levels - ease of use: choose your voice range, decide how long you want to train, hit play and just repeat what you hear. (Use the music notes if it helps; everything is shown in C-major for simplicity.) - acoustic recordings; hear sung examples and sing with a real grand piano – no midi sounds within earshot! - flexibility to set a focus and let the algorithms sort out the right exercises for you. Choose from Body work / Support, Resonance / Directionality, Vowel uniformity, Combining vocal registers, Agility / Coloratura, Economy of air flow / Legato, Articulation, or any of the vowels. - an Info-Button that gives you tips about the purpose and goals of every single exercise! *Amsel – Train your Voice is not meant as a singing tutorial but rather as a “fitness app,” a practical application of instant warm-ups to help you get and keep your voice and body in shape for speaking and singing well. Much like doing sit-ups provides many benefits without needing to understand what exactly they do for your body, doing a few simple voice exercises (such as fricative consonants or those pesky lip bubbles) can help to reinforce positive coordinations in your body that lead to optimal use of your vocal cords. For information regarding the science and pedagogy behind the seemingly random collection of syllables and notes, visit amselapp.com/tips – you‘ll find reading tips, video explanations, resources and other media we recommend for a more complete understanding of your voice and singing. Sarah Fuhs (creator) has over 15 years of experience teaching voice and working with choir singers. As a trained singer and pianist, she began developing digital alternatives for teaching singing technique in 2020, and the Amsel-App is the culmination of that work. https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/