 |   Format : CD-ROM Edition : Standard Publisher : eMedia Company : eMedia List Price: Our Price: $39.95 You Save: $20 (34%) |
Features
- Ear-training software with instant interactive feedback on answers
- Standard and Jazz tutors with over 650 lessons; customizable exercises
- On-screen guitar, piano, violin, bass, and others; variable tone range--from soprano to bass
- Sing, play, or clap answers into a microphone; automatic guitar tuner and metronome
- Plays in any of 128 instrument sounds; progress reports; designed for all musicians
Product Description
If you want to sing, improvise or jam with complete confidence, you need to recognize all the sounds around you. Ear training can make this possible. Making music with others will become easy and fun! EarMaster is your personal teacher. It is easy to use and provides instant feedback. EarMaster includes a Standard Tutor with over 400 lessons as well as a Jazz Tutor with over 200 lessons. Both will guide you and automatically increase in difficulty as your ear improves. Create your own customized exercises to improve the way you play, compose and notate any style of music!SimilarProduct
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Customer reviews
I bought this at the San Francisco Apple Store by .. Robert D. Glover Jr. (Linden, NJ USA)
I think it says something that Apple sells this music software at their San Francisco Apple store. That indicates EarMaster Pro has gone through some serious vetting, as Apple does not sell junk. Apple's shelf space for selling software is small.
Except for those days when there isn't enough time or I'm too busy, I use the EarMaster Pro software every day for about a half hour. I've been using Ear Master Pro for about four months and am nearly half way through the exercises. EarMaster Pro has an online forum which has been helpful and responsive when I've had questions.
In a good way, I have found the EarMaster Pro exercises beyond the starting "easy" ones to be brutally hard. I consider EarMaster Pro to be a program for music majors or for serious musical hobbyists such as myself who are highly motivated and have a strong background in musical harmony and musical theory. The more advanced exercises are so subtle that I ended up (with the help of someone on the Ear Master Pro forum) installing some additional "open source " software on my PC so that the musical tones of the chords generated by Ear Master Pro are easier to hear. For example, hearing the minor seventh of a four note V chord versus a V chord triad can be difficult if the tones are generated by the mediocre tone generator that comes standard on a WinXP computer. (EarMaster Pro works on both MAC and Windows).
If you (like myself) are a jazz pianist wanna-be, then Ear Master Pro is definitely a good purchase for you. You will most likely conclude, as I did, that first you have to go through Ear Master Pro's entire classical training program and only then tackle the (even more) difficult jazz exercises.
Flexible, wide ranging exercises and excellent support by .. L. Friedman (San Diego, CA USA)
I originally posted this review for EarMaster and not EarMaster Pro. I have the Pro version so I am adding the same review here.
I like the flexibility of this training software -- the ability to create my own exercises. I use the Tutor to narrow down issues and then construct my own exercises to further focus drills. Of the software I tried this one also has a fairly complete results report. I think this is important because it allows you to overcome your own sense of where weaknesses are when your own sense is incorrect.
The only issue I've found is with some of the rhythm drills that depend on the platform on which the software is running to be properly responsive. I find the responsiveness too unpredictable and therefor some of the drills like the rhythm imitation less useful. I do not think this is the fault of EM 5 or any other training software that tries to drill rhythmic input. It's more a platform issue.
Another very positive thing about this software is that I have found the Support to be outstanding. I've received responses to every single question or comment I've made within a day (I'm in the Pacific Coast USA timezone and they are in Denmark) even before I purchased it.
Well worth it.
Great software but... by .. demago (Singapore)
I love this software. I'm a pretty crappy guitarist who decided to go back to the basics and learn some music theory (which I'm doing via the "absolutely understand guitar" DVD set by Scotty West -- I recommend that product as well -- the presenter has a tendency to ramble and excessively repeat himself but ultimately the material is solid and a lot of things are starting to click so it was worth hanging in there). Anyway, this software is a perfect complement to your music theory studies. I think that unless you're just lucky to be born with a natural talent, you're going to need some dictation of intervals, chords, scales, and rhythm to atune your ear to how they sound. Playing it on your own instrument isn't as effective because you can't help using your eyes and fingers as a crutch. With this software, you have nothing but your ears to find the answer.
Some small nits to pick, which I'm writing here hoping that emedia will read this and include in its next upgrade: (1) the sounds are pretty crappy and hardly like the instruments they're supposed to represent. I'd rather get a choice of three instruments (say, piano, violin and steel string acoustic guitar) that sound realistic than 60+ crappy MIDI ones. (2) I wish an exercise were included that helps you train absolute pitch. For this, I think the Deburgh method is good. It starts by playing two notes (Eb and F#) and you have to listen in to the character of each and once you can distinguish them you progress to other/additional notes. (3) Another thing that I would find extremely useful is if the scale identification (which is what I'm working on now) could be expanded beyond ascending/descending. My hunch is that a program could be written to pick out notes from a scale in a sequence that still sounds relatively musical (following some musical rules). Or alternatively, plenty of examples (a couple of hundred, so you can't rely on memory) could be stored of existing music pieces in those scales. Ultimately, I would like to be able to hear something on the radio and be able to pick up by the character of the music that it's in this or that scale/mode (even if I can't tell the pitch) and the included exercise (just ascending/descending) is a bit too easy.
Enjoying this software by .. Mary Downing ()
I am very pleased with this software. Quick and easy to use. I do have an understanding of theory and Ear Master Pro 5 is a great review of music theory.
Excellent tool for serious music students! by .. C. Bigsby (Florida, USA)
I ordered this software for my daughter who is a music performance major at the suggestion of a music theory lab professor. She had found it very useful and uses it a LOT. The software arrived very promptly after ordering!