Traditional Irish Tune Rhythm, Key, and Mode Trainer

Tech
1

I’ve put together a Traditional Irish Tune Rhythm, Key, and Mode Trainer for anyone working on listening for tune rhythms, keys, modes, and backup chords.

When I first learned to play backup, one of the things I used to do was pick random tunes, listen to them, and try to work out the chords by ear. This trainer is basically a more structured version of that exercise.

Each session picks 10 tunes completely at random from the current collection of 100 traditional Irish tunes. You listen to each tune without seeing the notation and can choose from five different exercises: Rhythm + Key + Mode, Rhythm + Key/Mode, Rhythm Only, Key + Mode, or Key/Mode. In the options with a +, key and mode are answered separately; with Key/Mode, they’re selected as a single combined answer.

The rhythms currently represented in the collection are Reels, Jigs, Hornpipes, Slip Jigs, Slides, Polkas, and Barndances. For key and mode exercises, the trainer works with Major, Dorian, and Mixolydian tunes.

After you submit an answer, the trainer gives you immediate feedback. For key and mode exercises, it also shows some common accompaniment chords and lets you hear the root note and relevant scales. If you get the key or mode wrong, you can directly compare the root notes and scales for your answer and the correct answer.

At the end of the 10 tunes, there’s a review showing your overall score, including which rhythms, keys, and modes gave you the most trouble.

Right now there are 100 tunes in the collection, and I’ll probably add more over time.

You can choose the instrument used for playback: Piano, Flute, Whistle, Fiddle, Mandolin, Tenor Banjo, Accordion, Concertina, or Hammered Dulcimer.

It’s meant primarily as a practical ear-training tool for people learning or improving their backup playing, but it may also be useful to anyone who wants to get better at recognizing traditional Irish tune rhythms and hearing the differences between Major, Dorian, and Mixolydian tunes.

I hope people find it useful!

Demo video:

Link to the ear trainer (note that this has changed from the original release):

6 Likes
2

In version 2.21, added “Practice Missed Tunes” as an option on the final review summary.

3

Thank you for assisting me in realising how rubbish I am at identifying the rhythm, key and mode. Great tool though. My ears clearly need training or more likely it is more than just my ears.

4

Cool, glad to hear it’s actually useful. :slight_smile:

1 Like
5

Based on the same framework as my Traditional Irish Tune Rhythm, Key, and Mode Ear Trainer, I’ve just released a new Traditional Irish Tune Name Ear Trainer.

This time the challenge is simple:

Can you identify the tune just by listening to it?

Each session randomly selects 10 tunes. For each one, listen to the tune and choose its name from a list of possible answers.

You can choose how challenging you want to make it by showing 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10 tune names.

At the end of the session, you can review the tunes you missed and practice them again.

The built-in collection has over 100 traditional Irish tunes, originally drawn from the San Diego Comhaltas chapter tunebook.

You’re not limited to those tunes.

You can load your own collection of ABC tunes from an .abc or .txt file and use that in place of the built-in collection.

So if you have a particular session repertoire, tunebook, or collection of tunes you’re trying to learn by ear, you can turn it into your own personalized tune-name ear trainer.

Thanks to Tim Arbon for suggesting the idea.

You’ll find the new ear trainer here:

Demo video:

6

The key-mode trainer is just what I need. Thank you, Michael.

And… After going through a bunch of tunes: I suck at this. More practice needed.

7

I’ve added a bunch of new features to the tune name ear trainer including optional auto-play on next tune and a “Reveal-only” mode that doesn’t provide any answers, just shows the tune name. The key/mode trainer also got the optional auto-play on next tune feature.