Help me hear and identify intervals

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Understand

An interval's number (2nd, 3rd, 4th...) and quality (minor, major, perfect...) are distinct facts: a raw semitone count alone is ambiguous between qualities in some cases, which is why this drill always generates a fully spelled target, not just a semitone gap. A correct or incorrect answer here is only ever a fact about this generated exercise. It is never a diagnosis of your relative pitch or hearing, and no mnemonic association ("sounds like a certain song") is claimed to work universally for every learner.

Worked example

A generated ascending major 3rd from C4 plays C4 then E4 and expects the answer "Major 3rd." A generated descending minor 3rd from E4 plays E4 then C-sharp4 (down a minor third), which is a different target note than the ascending example even though both are minor-third-family questions, because direction changes the resulting pitch.

Method and limitations

Each question is produced by a seeded pseudorandom generator, so the exact same sequence of questions can be reproduced in a test without building a permanent profile of you: the seed lives only for your current practice session. Playback uses simple sine-tone synthesis and only starts after your gesture (New Question or Replay). Session score is kept only in this page's memory and is never sent anywhere or stored between visits.

Getting useful practice out of a drill like this

Melodic playback (the two notes one after another) and harmonic playback (both together) exercise genuinely different listening skills: melodic recognition is closer to what singing or transcribing a line requires, while harmonic recognition is closer to what reading a chord or a two-part texture requires. Alternating between the two, rather than drilling only one, tends to build a more transferable sense of interval size than either alone. Getting an answer wrong here is informative, not discouraging: the evidence table that follows every answer shows you the actual root, target, and semitone distance, so you can check your own reasoning against the generated fact rather than against a vague sense of whether you were "close."

Because the generator is seeded per session rather than truly random, a browser automated test can reproduce and check an exact question sequence, but your practice session itself still draws a fresh sequence every time you load the page.

Next decisions

• First, understandInterval Explorer

A future Interval Explorer will let you browse every interval as a reference before drilling on it.