TKSolfege

Besides talent, an instrument and heavy amounts of documentation, music requires a special trait, namely musical ear. In other words, it's the quality of recognizing notes and scales by simply listening to the corresponding sound. This is where applications like TKSolfege come in handy as your personal musical ear trainer.

The first time you launch the application might tempt you to look for alternatives, but give it a little time, in spite of the rough, compact and rather ambiguous interface. A neat way is to go ahead and press all buttons and text strings, with accommodation quickly becoming less of an issue. Documentation is only found online and you might need to go through a little trouble to reach it, with no links to take you there directly.

For a proper experience, it's best you use headphones, since the application's purpose relies on playing some sounds you need to identify. You go through a decent amount of exercises such as chord, figured bass, interval, key signature and scale identification, cadence recognition, rhythmic dictation, solfege singing and a few more.

Depending on the lesson of interest, the interface is automatically changed and displays only elements you work with. You constantly need to use the “New” button to trigger a sound, with prompts indicating this to start a lesson.

Feedback comes from the MIDI sound database stored on your computer, so don't expect perfect quality. In terms of learning method, exercises are similar, with the main process playing a tune after which you need to select one of the provided answers. There's also the possibility to fully customize lessons by simply selecting what elements to be used.

A few settings are at your disposal to make the whole experience more comfortable. Adjusting a few sliders dictates how many notes to be played, what instrument to use, pitch level, duration, whether or not to repeat and more, depending on the selected type of exercise.

All things considered, we can safely state that TKSolfege can surprisingly teach you a thing or two and with enough practice, it achieves its purpose. The only thing you need to consider is the disappointingly simple and at times confusing interface, but it's not the looks that matter. An abundance of different lessons take you through various exercises, all with their own set of configurations so you can properly train your ear.