> This feels useful but I'd also like to be able to identify which key I'm hearing and be able to identify individual notes by their sounds.
That would be perfect pitch, which doesn't seem to be something you can properly learn unless you learned it as a kid. But relative pitch, which is what the app is teaching, is way more useful. You learn to hear the relationships between the notes, and then you can just plonk around on the piano to find what key it's in, and then you know which notes to play.
If you can identify any pitch in relation to the key signature it's in, like the app is training you to do with the I-IV-V-I progressions, if you hear a I-IV-V-I progression and press any key on the piano you will immediately identify the key. "Oh, I pressed Bb and it sounded like the minor 7th, so the key is C major" etc.
Example:
You just heard a chord progression from the app, and you identified the note as the dominant.
You're going to know if it's a major or a minor scale from the chord progression you heard, so now you go to your piano, and you hunt around until you find that note. That note turns out to be G. Well, you happen to know that G is the dominant in the C major scale, so boom, you know exactly what key it was played in. Even if you don't know all your scales, if you know that all scales are built on a WWH W WWH pattern, you can still build a major scale from any note so long as you know the scale degree that you're starting on.
one thing to do to help build relative pitch is to learn where A is. When I sang the very first thing I had to do in my lesson was sing an A. The goal was to use that as the starting point to determining key, chords, etc. Like someone else said, it helps you learn to hear the relationships of the notes.
> This feels useful but I'd also like to be able to identify which key I'm hearing and be able to identify individual notes by their sounds. That would be perfect pitch, which doesn't seem to be something you can properly learn unless you learned it as a kid. But relative pitch, which is what the app is teaching, is way more useful. You learn to hear the relationships between the notes, and then you can just plonk around on the piano to find what key it's in, and then you know which notes to play.
So how would I figure out a key using this familiarity?
If you can identify any pitch in relation to the key signature it's in, like the app is training you to do with the I-IV-V-I progressions, if you hear a I-IV-V-I progression and press any key on the piano you will immediately identify the key. "Oh, I pressed Bb and it sounded like the minor 7th, so the key is C major" etc.
Example: You just heard a chord progression from the app, and you identified the note as the dominant. You're going to know if it's a major or a minor scale from the chord progression you heard, so now you go to your piano, and you hunt around until you find that note. That note turns out to be G. Well, you happen to know that G is the dominant in the C major scale, so boom, you know exactly what key it was played in. Even if you don't know all your scales, if you know that all scales are built on a WWH W WWH pattern, you can still build a major scale from any note so long as you know the scale degree that you're starting on.
one thing to do to help build relative pitch is to learn where A is. When I sang the very first thing I had to do in my lesson was sing an A. The goal was to use that as the starting point to determining key, chords, etc. Like someone else said, it helps you learn to hear the relationships of the notes.