ET vs Scale Syllabus

Yet another ear-training app? Well, this one is different! Playing jazz, pop and improvised music means being able to quickly recognize and replay what you hear. Although this app began as an ear-training tool for students of jazz and pop at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), it is also intended for musicians playing in other styles, and at all levels. It was developed by Swiss IT specialist and jazz trumpeter Daniel Schenker, professor at ZHdK, in collaboration with his son Elia. How it works The app offers a host of ear-training exercises, many of them quite enjoyable, all designed to enhance both active and passive hearing. Active hearing means reproducing what you have heard on an instrument or with your voice, while passive hearing refers to the ability to identify such things as the scales, triads and four-note-chords, tensions and slash chords, on which active hearing is based. One of the features that make our app so special is the fact that its microphone enables a sort of dialogue between the app and the musician – whether on voice, brass and reed instruments, guitar, piano or electric bass. Unlike other apps, this one uses an integrated voicing generator to ensure that the chords played (position, voicing) correspond to the actual performance situation. In addition, the app uses a detailed educational guidance system, which allows users to individually customize the exercises. You can obtain over 280 achievements. Compete with other users and publish your high scores and trophies!   Active exercises (microphone) - Five-tone range imitation, major and minor: suitable for younger students or amateurs - Diatonic imitation: reproduction of notes in a particular key, vocally or on an instrument - Atonal imitation: improvement of relative or referential hearing - Tone sequences (2 - 6 tones) - Intervals - Resolution game: technique for the improvement of downward interval singing or playing - Bass imitation exercises: double bass notes and root notes of various chords are to be reproduced vocally or on an instrument, a central skill that is often underdeveloped - Sing or replay chord tensions (e.g. #9, b13) - Scales sandbox: imitation practice in tonal spaces from over 40 different scales - Tonal memory game   Passive exercises (identification practice) - Intervals / Interval series - Triads/four-note-chords in root position and inversion; top note positions - Four-note-chords with one tension (17 types) and with two tensions (15 types) - All 12 major and minor triads above a root note (slash chords/hybrids) - Identification of scales, modes and over 140 jazz, pop and classical chord progressions Depending on the setting, the chords can also be played arpeggiated. The app supports Bluetooth MIDI (iPhones only).   For whom is the app intended? - Singers both amateur and professional who want to incorporate (noteless) ear training exercises into their practice programme. - Musicians in primary and secondary school, musicians and singers preparing for university entrance exams (practical theory), and conservatory students - Musicians and singers of all genres, especially jazz/pop/rock, who want to freshen up or expand their chord vocabulary - Brass players: control in mouthpiece exercises (buzzing)

Scale Syllabus puts the 253 scales of Complete Scale Syllabus by Gianluca Barbaro in your pocket, and lets you see, hear and transpose every one of them. The scales are not a stored list. The app rebuilds them with the algorithm the book itself was made with: every seventh chord, every combination of available tensions, folded together by rotation. That is why the numbering matches the printed page exactly — scale 145 here is scale 145 in the book. WHAT YOU CAN DO • See any scale in standard notation, on a piano keyboard, or on a guitar or bass fretboard • Transpose to any of the twelve keys, with each note spelled the way a musician would write it • Start from any degree: pick a mode and the scale is shown from that note, in the key you chose • Hear a scale or any of its chords, ascending or arpeggiated, with the notes lighting up as they sound • See the triads and four-note chords every degree carries, inversions included, and view any of them the same three ways • Read the fretboard as a whole map, or touch a fret for the run one hand can play from there • Ask for a chord and the neck answers with shapes a hand can really hold — tap again for the next one • Walk through the sixteen ways a four-note chord can be laid out inside two octaves of keyboard • Choose your instrument once, and clef, written octave and transposition follow • Find a scale from the notes themselves: play a phrase into the microphone, or type the note names, and the app lists the scales that contain them and says what chord they make • Follow the relationships: which scales contain this one, which ones it contains, and which are a note away • Print a scale as a sheet of engraved music, export it as PDF, or share it • Read six short chapters of music theory, with figures the app draws itself • Mark favourites and keep your own written notes on any scale A guided tour goes through all of it the first time you open the app, and it can be replayed whenever you like. The app speaks English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese and Chinese, and you can look for a scale in your own language. The names of the scales themselves stay as the book prints them. WHAT MAKES IT ACCURATE The book's own derivation quietly loses four chord types, and with them five scales. This app generates them too — appended at the end, so that not a single number from the printed book moves. Note spelling follows musical function rather than whatever is cheapest to compute: a minor seventh chord is written C Eb G Bb, never C D# G A#. FREE AND COMPLETE Three scales are always open: major, harmonic minor and melodic minor — and with the major come all its modes, natural minor included. You can open two more of your choice, and the ones you open stay yours. A single purchase opens all 258 scales and unlocks printing, PDF export and sharing — no subscription, no account. Nothing you write leaves your device. The app has no accounts, no advertising and no tracking of any kind, and what you play into the microphone is analysed as it arrives and never recorded, stored or sent anywhere. Reports of wrong or missing scale names are welcome: me@barbaro.it