EarMaster Wishlist thread

Discuss EarMaster, ear training, theory or music in general, ask questions and share your experience.

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jerom.b
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Post by jerom.b »

Chords dictation ?
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Hans
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Post by Hans »

Thank you for your suggestion. Chord dictation is pure music theory and that might be included some day, but first of all we focus on exercises that include sound. This means either to identify what was played or play what you see (sight reading).

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Hans Jakobsen
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jerom.b
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Post by jerom.b »

Hello Hans

Firts of all, I am french and I apologize for my poor English.

I was talking about an excercice where the software play chords and you have to play / indicate / select back what you heard.This is what is done with note or rythm dictate, but with chords - somehow like chords progression but without any known cadence.

Exercice where you could "just" play or sing writen notes should be usefull, too.

regards
Jerome
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Pacifist
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Post by Pacifist »

I have two additions that I would love to see in V6.

1. Real song analysis.

It would be amazing if you could expand upon the chord progression exercise and make a new exercise that has full songs (in midi format) from various styles of music that we could analyze. Copyright issues aside, this would be a great way for a musician to sift through the arrangement and identify the chord progression in a real world situation. Maybe you could ask to make a deal with Hal Leonard for their catalog :-D.

2. Midi import for sight reading

In a addition to the new sight reading feature you guys have mentioned, it would be a huge help if you included the option for users to import their own midi files to practice. Included would the option for a scrolling one-line or one page score, tempo adjust, and the option for earmaster to either stop until each note is correctly entered, or continue scrolling and count up the mistakes as the playhead moves. I want to be able to sight read Chopin!!!

Do you guys have a release date for V6 in mind?

Great software, keep up the good work and low prices! :-D
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Quentin
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Post by Quentin »

Hi Pacifist,
Hopefully, V6 will be ready by the end of 2011, but that's only if everything goes as planned...
I think you will be happy to hear that your suggestions were already on the TO-DO list, and that unless something goes wrong, you should be able to sight-read Chopin and get a computer evaluation of it in the near future ;-)
- Because in Music, We're All Ears... -
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bswargo
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Statistics Improvement

Post by bswargo »

I think I have seen this subject broached before on the forum. Better way to track progress? With more potential yardsticks? I have Pro version but not the School. For example, in the Rhythm Reading section, at what tempo was the exercise attempted. I could get 100% accuracy at 40bpm. That doesn't mean I'm a good sight reader if the band needs me to play a piece at say, 160 bpm.
:laugh3:

P.S. Please don't think this is meant to be negative criticism. I LOVE this program. It's just that we can always be better than we are! Thanks.
1-ee-and-uh 2-ee-and-uh.....
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Quentin
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Post by Quentin »

It's a really good idea, thanks a lot!
- Because in Music, We're All Ears... -
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torturedutopian
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Post by torturedutopian »

Hi ! Maybe you could consider using a multi-platform toolkit like Qt that would probably make it easier to maintain OSX/Windows/Linux versions at the same time ?

Cheers !
Earmaster + ArchLinux 64
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asioh
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Post by asioh »

For E6, I have a sort of short list, but they are some fundamentals I think are lacking.
1) why isn't there, in any ear training program, a way to here a progression of intervals? This is super handy for training perfect pitch.
2)And for relative pitch, some two, three, and four part dictation would be nice.
Especially, the multiple part dictation would be great with an expanded jazz vocabulary. No one could beat that.
3) And, of course being able to add customizable chords into chord progressions would be great. And having the progressions more randomized would also be awesome, because customizing is so tedious. Perhaps you could simply follow the principles of dom, sub dom, and tonic relationships to determine chord progression outcomes.
4) all exercises in the jazz and standard tutor should be offered in inversions, as a basic part of training.

-As far as all these people asking about sight reading, I don't see what that has to do with ear training. You get better by practicing doing it, and building up your reflexes, there is no short cut a computer program will somehow make easier. It's a step removed from the problem, so it can only add a layer of difficulty.
- as far as having real music sample, forget it, it doesn't matter. once people master the basics, they can further their ear training by listening to actual music, it doesn't have to be programed in.

Polyphonic, 2 part rhythm reading would be awesome to. I haven't the faintest idea how that would work without a controller to play the two parts separately. Those exercises are awesome, although, some of the initial tempos need to be slowed down. I found I had to turn down the metronome at the onset of a lot of the exercises. Anyway, it's a minor point. If it ain't broke...
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Quentin
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Post by Quentin »

...don't fix it ;-) . Thanks a lot for your detailed suggestions. The ear training part, which is the main focus of EarMaster, will be enriched with more possibilities, more activities, and more realism. Most of your requests are actually already considered. Whether they will be included depends mostly on how fast the development will be.

Here are some comments on some of your suggestions:
1) Isn''t the melodic dictation exercise already able to do that? Or have I perhaps misunderstood your point?

2) Yes it would :-)

3) See 2)

4) Do you mean inversions of jazz chords?

5) Sight reading perhaps, but sight-singing is an important part of ear training

6) Many people have a hard time hearing chords with the standard MIDI synths, and many teachers are actually even hostile to it... Having realistic sounds will make ear training more realistic and will eliminate all latency issues.

7) We have our ideas on that one ;-)

Thanks again, and have fun training your ear with EarMaster!
- Because in Music, We're All Ears... -
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Batis
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Post by Batis »

Some more suggestions:

1) The capability to loop one or more measures of an exercise, or the entire exercise.
2) The capability of saving a specific exercise (not just an exercises setup). You could build up own bank of specific exercises.
3) The ability to share these exercises with other users.

(I've mentioned the next two already)

4) Stress/accent exercises, the capability to practise accents.
5) Tuplets (quintuplets, septuplets...) including nested tuplets capability.
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medownes
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Post by medownes »

asioh wrote:-As far as all these people asking about sight reading, I don't see what that has to do with ear training. You get better by practicing doing it, and building up your reflexes, there is no short cut a computer program will somehow make easier. It's a step removed from the problem, so it can only add a layer of difficulty.
Except that if you are not very confident at sight reading, you finish playing the piece and have no idea whether you got it right or not! If you haven't got a teacher next to you to point out the errors there and then, the next best thing would be to have instant feedback from a computer to replay what you played and what you should have played.

Obviously an attached MIDI keyboard or microphone to sing the line are essential.

I really struggle with sight reading and in particular a terrible tendency to stop when I am unsure or something doesn't sound right and try to fix it.

I was really inspired by this Youtube video sent to me on the subject of sight reading:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aASBNbeREEY

The whole video is great but perhaps of particular interest in terms of developing sight reading features for EM6 is the section from 4:40 to 7:40.

It would be good to have the feature which the teacher describes where as soon as you start playing the first note, the grand staff scrolls quickly across to the left, thereby:

a) forcing your eye to be looking at the next bar or bars ahead and not at the bar that you are actually playing.

b) not giving you the opportunity to stop and try and "fix" things, you have to get into the habit of just keep going despite mistakes.

Also as she suggests, if you had to sight read a piece while playing the role of an accompianist then you awould be forced to keep up and just keep going.

I have explained the feature as best as I can but I think she does a much better job than me and the video is well worth a look.
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Quentin
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Post by Quentin »

Your explanation makes perfect sense. I don't want to comment too much on that suggestion, but yes, it is a very good idea, and it would be really great :-)
- Because in Music, We're All Ears... -
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Jasim
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EM5 Improvement

Post by Jasim »

Hi,
It would be tremendously useful to see EM6 have options to set for alternative intonations. It appears it is set for equal temperament (Piano, Guitar) , where bowed string players use Pythagorean or Just Intonation. To see the option of intonation choice would be a mark of excellence in this product.

Also, since most orchestras tune to 444Hz not 440Hz, and Baroque music uses 417Hz, it would be complete if there was an option to register desired pitch as well.

Thank you and excited to see your improved product.
Happy 2011!!!
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sailboarder
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Melody reading

Post by sailboarder »

I was about to buy EM5 since I was sure that melody reading was part of it. I was looking for something similar to rythmic reading.

To graphically see what went wrong with my rythmic reading made me progress fast. I was hoping to help my daughter with melodic reading...

Hopefully, this feature would be the first of a Melody suite similar to the rythmic one. When both are available, a third one with complete sight reading would be great too.
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