Exercise guide
Pitch Discrimination
Ear training for small pitch differences
Listen to two tones and decide whether the second is higher, lower or the same. Focus on hearing the difference without having to sing.
Start with Free Training in your browser. No microphone or account is needed; headphones are recommended.
What you practise
Pitch discrimination is the ability to hear a difference between pitches. This exercise isolates that listening skill from vocal production: you compare sounds without using your voice.
It can be a useful starting point if you struggle to hear whether a note is flat or sharp, even when listening to a recording. It does not test absolute pitch or diagnose a hearing condition.
How it works
- Open the exercise and choose Free Training.
- Start an attempt and listen to the first tone, then the second.
- Choose higher, lower or same for the second tone.
- Check the answer feedback, then start the next attempt.
In adaptive practice, correct answers make the pitch differences smaller. Incorrect answers increase the difference so you can continue practising.
Understand the feedback
Answer feedback tells you whether your comparison was correct. Difficulty is the size of the difference between unequal tones, measured in cents: 100 cents is one semitone. A smaller number asks you to hear a subtler difference.
This number describes a listening task, not how far your singing is out of tune. The live difficulty display is rounded; it may not visibly change after every small adjustment.
Free Training and Test
Use Free Training to explore the task at your own pace. A Test starts at 100 cents and finishes after your fifth incorrect answer. Its score is the resulting difficulty after that answer, shown to two decimal places; lower is better.
Free Training is available without an account. To take a Test, register or sign in; the account is free. Completed Tests are saved to your account history. Free Training and unfinished Tests are not saved as Test results.
Practice tips
Use a quiet space and a comfortable volume. Compare pitch rather than loudness or tone colour. Listen carefully before answering, and take a break when you notice you are guessing.
Compare results under similar listening conditions. Better performance here describes pitch perception on this task; check separately how it transfers to singing.
Choose your next exercise
If you can hear a difference but struggle to reproduce a note, try Match the Pitch. For a sustained reference, use Drone. To tune a sung note within a harmony, explore Harmonic Tuning.
Ready to practise?
Open Pitch Discrimination and choose Free Training to get started.
Practise Pitch DiscriminationRead the guide for more listening and practice advice.