/earworm
A Risk of Reptiles original
Earworm: Learn Riffs by Ear
Get the app here:
Apple Store
If you can sing it, why can't you play it? You have millions of years of evolution and tens of thousands of hours listening to music etching melodies into your brain. You're an expert at hearing music and reproducing it in your head.
How do you close the gap between hearing a melody in your head and producing it on your instrument? You could memorize sheet music. Or blindly follow tabs. But that is akin to painting-by-numbers -- to paint a mural on the Sistine Chapel, you have to dissolve the barriers between you and the music. You want notation, fret numbers, and note names to fade away until speaking with your instrument is as intuitive as humming along to a tune on the radio.
This app uses an interval-based approach (i.e. focusing on a note's function and feeling) to transcribing riffs and licks that you've probably heard hundreds or thousands of times. It has you learn these riffs using nothing but your instrument and your ear.
You will figure out the palette of notes the melody is painted with, and finally jam along, trading bars with the app. Riffs are grouped into levels in a logical progression, slowly stretching your abilities and widening your sonic vocabulary.
If you are on guitar, another goal of this app is to help you build an intuitive grasp of where intervals are, no matter where you are on the neck. Playing the same riff in many different positions using different shapes becomes trivial once you build your intervallic knowledge.
You could continue to read me rambling about musical education philosophy, or you could download the app and start learning some catchy melodies by ear :)
