Why does it not play the interval for me?

Because producing the pitch yourself is the exercise. A tool that plays the interval trains recognition of its own synthesised sound; playing it on your own instrument, or singing it, trains the connection between what you hear and what you do — which is the skill that transfers to actually playing music.

Are the reference songs reliable?

They are a widely used memory aid and they work well as a starting point. They are also culturally specific: the standard list is largely Anglophone and twentieth-century, so if the tunes are not ones you grew up with, replace them with your own. The aim is eventually not to need them at all.

How is this different from the interval practice generator?

That one is written theory — naming and spelling intervals on paper, marked on the spelling. This one is aural — hearing and pitching them. They are genuinely different skills, and being good at one predicts surprisingly little about the other.

Why can I not hear the difference between an augmented 4th and a diminished 5th?

Because there is not one. They are the same sound written two ways, and which is correct depends on the key and the direction the music resolves. At advanced difficulty you are being asked for a spelling, which is a theory question rather than an aural one — the page says so, and it is worth knowing before you conclude your ears are at fault.

Ear Training Prompt Generator

Ear training needs a source of intervals you cannot predict and an answer you cannot see until you have committed to one. That is what this does. It draws an interval, tells you the starting note, and hides what it is until you press reveal — because the moment you can see the answer, you are no longer training your ear.

Difficulty

Number of prompts

Up to 40.

Descending — pitch the interval downwards from the starting note

Seed (optional)

Makes the set reproducible, so the same worksheet can be printed twice.

Your ear training prompts will appear here.

What this generator does

Draws an interval and a starting note, keeps the answer hidden, and gives you the well-known song each interval opens with once you reveal it. Those reference songs are the standard mnemonic device — a rising perfect 4th is the start of Auld Lang Syne, a rising minor 6th is The Entertainer — and they work because a melody you already know is a far better anchor than an abstract distance. The tool is deliberately silent: it tells you what to play rather than playing it, so the pitch comes from your instrument or your voice and the training is real.

How to use this tool

Choose a difficulty. Starter sticks to the intervals most people learn first.
Press Draw to get a starting note and a hidden interval.
Play the starting note on your instrument, sing or play the interval, then reveal it and check.
Say what you think it is out loud before revealing — thinking it is not the same as committing.

Understanding the controls

Difficulty: Starter uses the intervals people learn first and can distinguish soonest. Standard adds the rest of the simple intervals. Advanced adds compound intervals and the augmented and diminished spellings, which sound identical to their simpler neighbours and are told apart by context rather than by sound.
Direction: Ascending, descending or both. This matters more than people expect: most players who can name a rising minor 6th instantly cannot name a falling one, because the reference songs they learned all go upwards.
Number of prompts: How many to draw in one session. Ten to fifteen is a realistic daily session; more than that and concentration rather than hearing becomes the limit.

Worked examples

A starter prompt: Start on G. The interval is hidden. You play G, sing what you think, reveal: perfect 5th — the opening of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
Descending: Start on D, descending. Reveal: minor 3rd — the opening of Hey Jude.
Advanced: Start on B♭. Reveal: augmented 4th — the opening of Maria from West Side Story, and the hardest interval to pitch cold.

Common use cases

Daily aural practice without needing a partner to play intervals for you
Preparing for the aural section of a graded music exam
A singer working on pitching intervals accurately from a given note
A music teacher running aural work with a class from a projector
Getting past the plateau where you can name a 5th and nothing else

How this generator works

Each prompt is a starting note and an interval, both drawn independently within the difficulty. The interval is constructed properly rather than picked as a semitone count, so what is revealed is a correctly spelled interval name — which matters at advanced difficulty, where an augmented 4th and a diminished 5th sound the same and are written differently. The reference songs are a curated mapping, one per interval and direction, chosen from tunes that are widely known in the English-speaking world; that last qualification is a real limitation rather than a detail, and the page states it.

Randomness and fairness

Starting notes and intervals are drawn independently with the browser's cryptographic random number generator, which means the same interval can come up twice running. That is genuinely what independent draws look like and it is worth knowing, because the instinct when it happens is to assume the tool is stuck. Entering a seed switches to a reproducible, non-cryptographic generator so a teacher can set the same sequence for a class — that mode is deliberately not cryptographically secure, since anybody with the seed can reproduce the session, which is exactly what makes it useful here. Nothing on this page is security-sensitive either way.

For how randomness is produced across the whole site, see how Generate Random works.

Assumptions this tool makes

You have an instrument or a voice to produce the starting pitch.
Intervals are heard from the starting note in the direction shown.

Limitations and good to know

It makes no sound. That is deliberate — the pitch has to come from your instrument or your voice for the training to work — but it does mean you need one to hand.
The reference songs are mostly Anglophone and mostly twentieth-century. If you did not grow up with them they will not help, and a tune you know well from your own tradition is a better anchor.
Reference songs are a memory aid rather than a method. Players who rely on them permanently stay slower than players who eventually stop needing them.
Augmented and diminished intervals sound identical to their enharmonic neighbours. At advanced difficulty you are being asked to name a spelling you cannot hear, which is a theory exercise wearing an aural costume.
There is no scoring or progress tracking. Nothing is stored between sessions.

Common mistakes

Revealing before committing to an answer: Say it out loud first, even if you are alone and even if you are unsure. The moment of committing is where the learning happens; checking a hunch you never stated teaches almost nothing.
Only practising ascending intervals: Descending intervals are a separate skill and most people are much worse at them. Turn on both directions once ascending is reliable, and expect to feel like a beginner again.
Practising for an hour once a week: Aural skill responds to frequency far more than duration. Ten minutes daily beats seventy minutes on a Sunday by a wide margin.

Practical tips

Sing the interval before you play it. Checking your voice against the instrument is the whole exercise; playing first and singing along is not.
When you get one wrong, play it three times and sing it back before moving on. Moving straight to the next prompt wastes the most useful moment in the session.
Work on the two intervals you find hardest rather than running the whole set. Almost everyone has a specific pair they confuse, and that pair is where the improvement is.

Troubleshooting

I cannot tell a major 6th from a minor 7th: That pair, and the tritone against the 5th, are the classic confusions. Practise just those two against each other until the difference is obvious, rather than mixing them into a full set where you can guess.
The reference song does not help: Substitute one you actually know. The mnemonic works because the tune is familiar, so a song from your own listening beats a standard one you have never heard.

Privacy and your data

Nothing is entered and nothing is stored, between sessions or otherwise. Prompts are generated in your browser and analytics records only that the tool was used along with the difficulty — never a prompt or how you did.

Frequently asked questions

Why does it not play the interval for me?: Because producing the pitch yourself is the exercise. A tool that plays the interval trains recognition of its own synthesised sound; playing it on your own instrument, or singing it, trains the connection between what you hear and what you do — which is the skill that transfers to actually playing music.
Are the reference songs reliable?: They are a widely used memory aid and they work well as a starting point. They are also culturally specific: the standard list is largely Anglophone and twentieth-century, so if the tunes are not ones you grew up with, replace them with your own. The aim is eventually not to need them at all.
How is this different from the interval practice generator?: That one is written theory — naming and spelling intervals on paper, marked on the spelling. This one is aural — hearing and pitching them. They are genuinely different skills, and being good at one predicts surprisingly little about the other.
Why can I not hear the difference between an augmented 4th and a diminished 5th?: Because there is not one. They are the same sound written two ways, and which is correct depends on the key and the direction the music resolves. At advanced difficulty you are being asked for a spelling, which is a theory question rather than an aural one — the page says so, and it is worth knowing before you conclude your ears are at fault.