Ear training is the practice of learning to recognise pitches, intervals, melodies, chords and rhythms by hearing alone. For a producer it is the shortest path from the sound in your head to the right key on the keyboard.
Relative pitch and perfect pitch
Someone who can name a pitch without any reference has perfect, or absolute, pitch. Someone who can name it given a reference note or a musical context has relative pitch. A figure of 1 in 10,000 is widely quoted for perfect pitch, though it may not be accurate; a 2019 review found at least 4% among music students. Relative pitch is what ear training builds, and it identifies an interval directly by its sound.
What to practise
| Minutes | Skill | How |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Intervals | Hear two notes and name the interval; check on a keyboard (see Intervals) |
| 2 | Chord quality | Major, minor, dominant seventh or major seventh: name it, then play it |
| 2 | Scale degrees | Sing back a note against a held tonic on its movable-do syllable |
| 3 | Dictation | Write down a short melody or drum pattern from a record |
Writing a melody down from hearing it is often compared to taking dictation in a spoken language, and it is the skill that pulls the others together.
Functional hearing
Functional pitch recognition hears each note by its role against the tonic: this is the third of the key, that is the leading tone. It is not the same as fixed-do solfège, whose syllables label absolute pitches. For songwriting and production, hearing function usually matters more than naming letters, because it is the same in every key.
Sources
Every date, name, tempo and origin on this page comes from these pages, read on 2026-10-24.