ABRSM Music Theory Trainer

font size is too small for the scale questions

The App does not give the reason why an answer is wrong, leaving you to guess why the answer is wrong. Furthermore, it does not give key signatures in intervals, making it nearly impossible to get perfect. Last of all, you cannot zoom in, making it more difficult unfairly. If all the complaints I mentioned have been solved, then this review would have been 6 out or 5. Verrrrry disappointed.

I don’t like theory

This app is very basic. The functionality is clunky, and it has not kept pace with similar development of teaching apps. Particular annoyances - Sometimes knowledge is quizzed that hasn’t been introduced previously: e.g. what legato, staccato, etc are. This is annoying and not conducive to learning. - it isn’t explained why you got a question wrong: just that it is wrong with an option to reveal the answer, which makes this basically flash cards. Some additional explainer text for questions would be helpful. - the format is pretty stale and interactive; as above basically just flash cards presented in different ways: things like mock papers, actual sound-based exercises, options to get a mix of questions from across topics, would all be significant improvements - the progress is not intuitive: you can get a green tick in a topic after doing it once, but not actually answered a lot of core questions in the bank. My comparator to this is Duolingo: which obviously has huge resources but great potential to learn from

Having the ability to zoom in and out will make the app more functional on mobile. Especially for those with sight problems. The diagrams are too small to view.

I found this app less accessible and less comprehensive than free online materials. The app requires you to go through every part of a theory grade to access all the topics, which is tedious. The number of testing questions are small - only one set per topic? I am concerned the ‘basics/knowledge and learning’ and the questions after do not actually cover everything I need! The display is very small and notations can be difficult to read. While a good idea, with lots of potential, I could not recommend this to anyone above other free resources I have found. I only bought this app because of its association with ABRSM, but I am disappointed with my purchase.

I was hoping to use this for specific topics for grade 5 theory, but unlocking levels made this impossible. The ABRSM aural trainer is fab, but this one less so.

The app does not contain all the notes for each clef in the basic (learning section) of the app. It would help enormously if a third slide was included that contained all the ledger line notes for each clef. Along with helpful mnemonics for each clef.