Chords: intervals and scales

You need to provide detailed instructions on how to use your app. I cannot quite figure it out

There should be an option to turn off enharmonics and double sharps and flats

Great for staying sharp. However I’d love to see an option to select keys without the piano help. I find myself needing to picture the piano keys to try and remember scales. The piano display feels like a crutch.

I primarily wanted this app to improve my ability to play modal scales. While the app shows promise, the scale exercises don’t start by playing the tonic note. This is extremely frustrating, and makes it hard to hear the scale in one’s mind. On playback, the user finally hears the starting note of the scale…but not the ending note. This is interferes with ear-training for scales. Why did the designer leave out the tonic, the most important note of the scale? Also, not having the tonic throws off the learning in another way. For example, Dorian scales become too easy because the first note that actually plays fools the ear into building a minor scale, using the first note we do hear (the second degree of the scale) as the pseudo-tonic. This could be seen as cheating, but it’s really a problem of poor app design. Four other problems exist with the scales exercises: 1) There is no way to choose the difficulty level. A player is automatically presented with scales such as Cb and E#. 2) On some of the scales, the tonic note isn’t shown on the keyboard. When I was playing, Cb minor did not show the B key. It showed only the C key at the far left of the screen. 3) The hints are given as interval distances, but from the tonic note! I have never seen it done this way. It is not wrong, and perhaps this is how scales are taught in some countries. Since the intervals described are from the tonic note, though, the app really should play the sound of the tonic. 4) The scoring is discouraging: The player has to input six notes for each scale. If one is incorrect, the whole scale is marked wrong, even if the player corrected it before inputting the next note and got the other five right. I do still find the app useful for learning modal scales, and there appears to be no other app like it. Also, I applaud the developer for allowing the user to choose whether to use letters, Do-Re-Mi’s, Sa-Rhe-Ga, and other systems for naming the notes. I would like to see the developer fix the problems above. Also, I request that the developer add numerical scale degrees (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) in addition to letter names and Do-Re-Mi’s for the naming the notes.