MusicTools Music Dictionary vs Functional Ear Trainer

MusicTools is a set of tools designed for music students, amateur, and professional musicians. This initial release contains a comprehensive music dictionary and a set of useful quick reference charts. MusicTools contains thousands of definitions, abbreviations and performance notations used in music from the 18th century through the present day. Future versions will contain additional tools to assist all levels of musicians with rehearsal and performance. This version features an extremely fast, easy-to-use dictionary search engine and an intuitive set of charts allows for quick use during lessons, practice sessions, and rehearsals. English, German, Latin, Italian and French variations of words and pronunciations are also provided. Musicians who play from older manuscripts will find MusicTools especially helpful in identifying older notations and abbreviations no longer listed in modern dictionaries. Features in this edition: * Comprehensive Music Dictionary based on Elson's original classic Pocket Music Dictionary * Abbreviations Chart * Accelerations Chart * Circle of Fifths Chart * Retardations Chart * Tempo Markings Chart * Musical Symbols Chart MusicTools is produced by musicians for musicians and is designed to help you be the best musician you can be!

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.