Shh..... Listen
Yesterday I cam across this wonderful app for iOS, Android and Mac. It's from a company called The Pro Audio Files and It's designed to:
Sharpen your ears and frequency recognition skills
Prevent noise buildup in your mixes and recordings
Develop intuition for which frequencies to boost or cut
Learn how to identify and remove problematic frequencies
Drastically improve your mixing and EQ'ing chops
Import source material from your own music library
Get cleaner mixes with more effective use of EQ
Eliminate the need to sweep for frequencies using EQ
(Theproaudiofiles, 2017)
Quiztones
My first impressions of this app are it's a wonderfull tool to aid any musician, producer or audio engineers to develop their ear in an accurate way.
The App has three modes and a very simple and intuitive user interface.
Tones
EQ
Gain
Main Menu
Tones
In the tones you are tested on the ability to identify the fundamental frequency of a test tone (Sine Wave). There is 2 difficulty options Expert and Easy. In expert the tones generated are at 1/3 Octave intervals and in Easy they are at octave intervals. I've started with easy and hope to get my score up enough to challenge myself on expert.
Options:
Objective:
Interface:
First attempt:
Thoughts:
For my first attempt I am pretty pleased with this result of 775/1000. I noticed I tend to identify each tone with a lower frequency that it really is. I really enjoy this mode and will be using this rather than playing Mario Run in the future.
EQ
In EQ mode the task is to identify boosts and cuts in a specific piece of music. You can choose from the following options for the music being played you can choose from:
My Music Library (Songs from you phones library/ itunes)
Acoustic Guitar
Drums
Electric Bass
Electric Guitar
Orchestra
Piano
Pink Noise
Strings
Strings 2
Upright Bass
Vocals
Each of these options provide you with 4 difficulty options with different levels of boosts or cuts as you can see in the picture below.
Options:
Objective:
Interface:
As you can see it is very similar to the interface for tones with 2 extra buttons the one to the left of play toggles a loop mode letting the sample audio repeat in an endless loop. The one to the right toggles the effect off and on allowing you to A/B (switch between active and inactive) the EQ boost or cut to identify which frequency is being affected.
First Attempt:
Thoughts:
Another great exercise and clearly I have a lot of improvement in me. It is a real challenge and something that will help me greatly moving forward in my career. I chose the electric bass as it was the first real instrument in the list. The lower frequencies I found a little easier than the high end.
Gain
In gain mode the challenge is to identify changes in overall amplitude (volume). You get to choose from the same audio samples used in the EQ section. This time with only 2 difficulty options Easy and Hard.
Options:
Objective:
Interface:
First Attempt:
Thoughts:
This exercise was much more difficult than I expected. I found I am better at identifying boost than cuts. I look forward to seeing how I go once I get my skill level up to the required level.
Review
I am thoroughly impressed by this app and wish I found it earlier. Being mobile means you can work on your ears anywhere you have your phone and a decent set of headphones. The A/B Option and controls are simple and easy to use. My only gripe is some of the sample audio makes it rather difficult to identify exactly what you a looking for (I believe that is intentional though). Great application for anyone who wants to improve their ears.
I will write a follow up post in a few weeks to compare how my ears are improving.
References
Theproaudiofiles. (2017). Quiztones — Frequency Ear Training App for Audio Engineers to Learn How to Use EQ in a Mix. Retrieved from https://theproaudiofiles.com/quiztones/