Hearing vs Backbeat
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Hearing
Develop your musical ear with ear training exercises and melodic dictations. Practice identifying notes and transcribing music using various instruments and notation systems. Improve your sight-reading and singing skills to become a better musician.
- Ear training exercises
- Melodic dictations
- Note identification
- Sight-reading practice
- Multiple instrument support
- Various musical notations
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How to identify musical notes by ear? Want to transcribe or play music by ear? Want to improve your hearing skills? Do ear training exercises. A well-developed relative or absolute pitch is necessary for every musician. Practice melodic dictations. Train sight reading to read sheet music and music notes. Learn to sing according to notes. Develop musical hearing with us. You can practice musical ear using following instruments: - vocals - piano - guitar - bass-guitar - violin - cello - double bass Types of musical notations: - C D E F G A B - C D E F G A H - Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si - До Ре Ми Фа Соль Ля Си - Ντο Ρε Μι Φα Σολ Λα Σι - ハ ニ ホ ヘ ト イ ロ - 다 라 마 바 사 가 나 - स रे ग म प ध नि - ด ร ม ฟ ซ ล ท
Backbeat
This app helps drummers improve their skills by focusing on rudiments and grooves. It transcribes your playing into musical notation, provides a customizable metronome, and tracks your progress with detailed statistics. Practice routines can be automated to keep you focused and motivated.
- Real-time notation transcription
- Rudiment library with target tempos
- Customizable metronome with subdivisions
- Automated practice routines
- Groove generation from text descriptions
- Progress tracking and speed curves
- Exportable song charts as PDF
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Most practice apps speak in chords and scales. Drummers count. Backbeat starts where drum practice actually starts: a rudiment, a tempo you can hold today, and a tempo you're chasing. It keeps the numbers, writes what you play as real notation, and runs the click while you do it. WRITTEN AS REAL NOTATION Tap hits into the grid and the staff writes itself. Hands stems-up, feet stems-down, ghost notes in parentheses, accents marked, flams and drags and diddles drawn the way you'd write them out by hand. Kick, snare, hi-hat, ride, crash, toms, cowbell and more across fourteen voices, on straight or triplet grids from two to thirty-two steps a bar. RUDIMENTS WITH A TARGET Every rudiment carries its sticking and a target tempo. Log a session and your current BPM moves. The library starts with eight basics and you can add your own. A CLICK THAT PUSHES YOU Quarter, eighth, sixteenth and triplet subdivisions. Accent, click or mute any beat. Tap the tempo when you don't have a number. The Speed Trainer raises the tempo on a schedule you choose and logs how far you got. ROUTINES THAT RUN THEMSELVES Give each block a length and a target tempo. The click follows along, every block logs itself when it ends, and the record fills in while your hands stay on the sticks. Three starter routines are there on day one. GROOVES, GENERATED Describe a feel in your own words and Backbeat renders it as notation you can play, edit and keep. PROOF YOU'RE GETTING FASTER Sessions, minutes, streaks, and a speed curve per rudiment. Not a participation badge; the actual tempo you held, over time. SONG CHARTS Build a chart measure by measure with repeats and counts, then export it as a paginated PDF, or share a single groove as an image for video. BUILT TO BE READ FROM A STAND Dark, high contrast, and large enough to follow at arm's length in a dim room. It follows your phone's appearance. Backbeat is free, made by one drummer, and still being built. If something in the notation looks wrong to you, say so; that's the part I most want to get right.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Backbeat at 100% against Hearing's 40%. Backbeat also leads on ads (none vs shown) and rating (5.0 vs 4.6). Hearing's advantage is ratings volume (120 vs 1) and device support (3 vs 1). On price and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Backbeat holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Hearing has 120 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 40% of Hearing's written reviews are positive against 100% of Backbeat's.
| Parameter | Hearing | Backbeat |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (120 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 40.4% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 120 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 6 months | — |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Ad-supported | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 74 MB | 7 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Alexey Ovod | PETER ANTHONY AFIF |
Customer experience
Hearing
Backbeat
In-app purchases
Hearing
No in-app purchases
Backbeat
No in-app purchases









