How to create an ear trainer
Did you know that Music Blocks is capable of creating an ear trainer?
This article details how worked together with MAP afterschool students to create a simple ear trainer, starting first by working with them to create a basic math quiz program.
What is an ear trainer?
An ear trainer tests your ability to identify pitches by playing random pitches and quizzing you on what those pitches are. Basic levels can quiz you on a few notes, using a constant reference pitch. More advanced levels can increase in range (i.e. more pitches), more successive pitches, testing rhythm, and more. For the ear trainer we made at MAP afterschool, we made a basic ear trainer that plays a reference pitch first, then plays a random pitch next and asks the user to guess what the second pitch is.
We started by making a math quiz
A student shared that they were working on various math problems, and began quizzing the other students in the class. This inspired me, so I decided to start my lesson by guiding the students to create their own math quiz program in music blocks.
Before we began, no such “math quiz” project had been created yet for Music Blocks (or, at least, none that I am aware of). This helped to keep the students invested in the project: we were creating something new, together.
We sketched out the important parts of the design together on the white board. I began with a simple prompt: to create a program such as this, what do we need?
On the white board, I wrote down the ideas that the students came up with. Once we were finished, we created the program. The following is what the students came up with.
Student projects:
Original “math quiz”: https://musicblocks.sugarlabs.org/index.html?id=1653511963713126&run=True
Super math quiz: https://musicblocks.sugarlabs.org/index.html?id=1638995429417859&run=True
Maths time: https://musicblocks.sugarlabs.org/index.html?id=1637698001772590&run=True
Super mathy: https://musicblocks.sugarlabs.org/index.html?id=1638992695656789&run=True
Remix of math quiz (multiplication): https://musicblocks.sugarlabs.org/index.html?id=1653511963713126&run=True
From there, we were able to create ear training programs.
Ear trainer: https://musicblocks.sugarlabs.org/index.html?id=1629147515542280&run=True
Pitch quiz: https://musicblocks.sugarlabs.org/index.html?id=1638992666652047&run=True
Simple music quiz: https://musicblocks.sugarlabs.org/index.html?id=1638995429417859&run=True
And, from there, we created some remixes
Interval quiz: https://musicblocks.sugarlabs.org/index.html?id=1574002336827551&run=True
Mr. Devin’s remix of interval quiz: https://musicblocks.sugarlabs.org/index.html?id=1574107628294598&run=True
Teacher reflections
Typically, I don’t consider quizzes as being a particularly fun thing for students. However, the students were enjoying quizzing each other, and, once they created their programs, were having a lot of fun quizzing themselves. This made me wonder: why are they having so much fun with something that is inherently pedantic? My guess is it’s because the students created these quizzes themselves, giving them more ownership over these programs. If I had started the lesson by giving them a quiz, I don’t think they would have liked it as much. However, they could customize the quizzes they created, making them how they liked.
Whatever the reason, the students had a lot of fun quizzing themselves using their own programs.
Next steps
As usual, the sky’s the limit with a programming language like Music Blocks. This means that anyone can build upon any of the projects shared here and add more features. Maybe its testing more than one pitch, maybe its testing pitches outside of a certain key, maybe its testing rhythm as well as pitch — whatever it is you want to create, you have the tools you need to create it.
And if you do create a cool new ear training program for Music Blocks, please share the link in the comment below. So far, one student has shared their remix via the contribute a blog post page, which you can read about here. Cheers!
