Play By Ear vs Intervals
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Play By Ear
Develop your musical ear with this call-and-response ear training app. It uses pitch recognition, allowing you to play notes back on your instrument instead of pressing buttons. Practice melodies, chords, and intervals in a way that mirrors real musical performance.
- Pitch recognition for instrumental interaction
- Hands-free, continuous play
- Interval, chord, and melody exercises
- Customizable tempo
- Multiple key centers
- Microphone calibration
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Play By Ear is a call-and-response ear training application that helps you develop the ability to hear pitches and play them back on your instrument by ear. Unlike other applications which force you to press buttons to indicate the notes you've heard, Play By Ear uses pitch recognition so you can play the notes back on your instrument (piano, guitar, trumpet, etc). Using your instrument to play the notes allows you to practice ear training in a method that most closely matches how you'll actually play music. ---------------------- APPLICATION FEATURES: ---------------------- - Pitch recognition so you can use your instrument to interact with the ear trainer - Hands-free, continuous play - Interval exercises - Chord exercises - Random melody exercises - Scale pattern melody exercises - Jazz lick melody exercises - Melodic and harmonic note sequences - Ascending and descending note sequences - Microphone calibration - Customizable tempo - Ability to show or hide the first note - C, Bb, Eb, F, G, and D key centers to match your instrument ---------------------- Note: Your device needs a microphone to fully enjoy Play By Ear's pitch recognition features. iPads, iPhones, and the latest iTouch all have microphones built-in, however older iTouch devices will need a headset or similar external microphone.
Intervals
This app helps you learn and practice identifying musical intervals and notes by ear. It offers customizable exercises with various instruments and difficulty levels to improve your relative and perfect pitch.
- Learn musical intervals
- Practice ear training
- Select intervals and notes
- Choose musical instruments (piano, guitar)
- Adjust octave
- Train relative and perfect pitch
- Difficulty levels
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Do you want to learn musical intervals? Do you want to practice your ear training? With the help of our application, you can try ear training for musical intervals. At the beginning of classes, you can choose the musical intervals and notes that you want to study. After that, you can select and adjust the musical instrument and octave. In the basic version of the app, you can choose to practice piano or guitar. You will be able to train relative pitch and perfect pitch by guessing musical intervals and notes. To achieve good results, you have to complete ear training exercises and practice solfeggio regularly. If you practice regularly, you will gradually learn how to guess notes and musical intervals by ear. You can study from scratch and improve your skills. Classes are divided into difficulty levels. It will be easy for you to choose the level that suits you. To achieve success in the development of aural skills, first you need to learn how to identify simple musical intervals by ear. Then you can start studying more complex musical intervals for different root notes. Practice piano and guitar regularly, train your aural skills every day and everything will work out.
Screenshots
Verdict
Play By Ear and Intervals both sit at 4.4 stars, but that hides the real split: 82% of Play By Ear's written reviews are positive against 0% of Intervals's. Play By Ear also leads on ads (none vs shown) and update cadence (every 2 months vs every 10 months). On price, rating, in-app purchases and device support 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.
Intervals holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Play By Ear has 82 ratings behind it against 5, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 82% of Play By Ear's written reviews are positive against 0% of Intervals's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Play By Ear ships an update every 2 months, Intervals every 10 months. The most recent releases landed on October 23, 2026 and October 29, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Play By Ear | Intervals |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.4 (82 ratings) | 4.6 (5 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 81.7% of reviews — better | 0.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 82 — better | 5 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months — better | Every 10 months |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Ad-supported |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 | 12.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 24 MB | 54 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | SuperNonstop.com, Inc. | Dmitry Zaika |
Customer experience
Play By Ear
Intervals
Bugs and requests
Play By Ear
Reported bugs
29 issues- No audio output
- App crashes frequently
- Pitch detection not working
- Plays single tone only
- Loses sound with timer/calls
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- Currently broken, plays back unison only
- Not working with iOS 9
- No audio on iPhone 6+
- Does not work with iOS8
- Doesn't save calibration
- Calibration only works sometimes
- Problems detecting notes below bottom 'A' on guitar
- Doesn't hear low octave notes
- App crashes after one or two exercises
- Does not play pitch as it should
- App keeps crashing after one exercise
- Pitch detection issues with voice
- Over-sensitive pitch detection
- App crashes after OS4 upgrade
- Phone doesn't pick up keys played on keyboard
- Tendency to crash randomly
- App crashes after one exercise
- Pitch detection too sensitive for wind instruments
- Doesn't pick up electric guitar
- Only picks up half notes on acoustic guitar
- App crashes, especially on interval section
- Mic issues with iPod Touch (not new version)
- App crashes after OS4 upgrade
- Phone doesn't pick up keys played on keyboard
Requested features
21 requests- Repeat option for phrases
- Limit scale patterns to selected scales/keys
- Profiles for multi-instrumentalists
- Test from the same root note sometimes
- Sign in and save practice data
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- Vary rhythms of melodies
- Add bass clef option
- Option to randomize ascending, descending, melodic, and harmonic intervals
- Add inversions for triads/chords
- Add more chord types
- Add a playable keyboard
- Setting to prevent sleep mode
- Ability to mix ascending and descending intervals/chords
- Input own phrases for practice
- Add rhythm feature
- Super-imposed pitch graph for feedback
- More forgiving pitch setting for wind players
- Option to force exercises in a chosen key
- Change clef in which notes are displayed
- Super easy version with delayed answer feedback
- Keyboard option for public places practice
Intervals
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Play By Ear
No in-app purchases
Intervals
No in-app purchases








