My New Project: rocketears.com

Hello friends,

I am a long-time member here, though I've contributed hardly any, and my compositions sit neatly below the rest of yours in every possible measure (har). Fortunately, my day job isn't making music; I'm a software engineer. I'm here to ask you for your feedback on a project I've been working on in the free time I've had that isn't reserved for feeling musically inferior to all of you.

The project is, for the moment, a proof of concept. The goal is to create an ear training application that will work on any capable device you own. Presently, this mostly means just your PC/Mac, however, over the coming year or two HTML 5 adoption should bloom. Hopefully with proper respect to the <audio> tag (I'm angrily shaking my fist at you, iPhone!). (Note: I was having a little trouble with Chrome support, so for the moment the site has been switched to flash and _not_ HTML 5 :( )

I'm going to leave it at that for now, I'd like to get some responses before I bias your experience any further.

If you have not done so, please visit http://rocketears.com now. Thanks.

If you feel like making your feedback more informative for me, you could do me the additional favor of completing this survey along with any other feedback you have.

1) Did the site seem to work properly for you?

2) What browser are you using? What operating system (and version, if known)?

3) Have you ever used, or do you presently use an ear training application? If so, which one(s)?

4) What is your estimated level of musical training?

5) What was the length of time you spent using rocketears.com?

6) What was your first impression?

7) Did you ever not know what to do? If so, how would you recommend resolving the issue?

8) Did the audio play back properly? How would you rank the sound quality?

9) Do you feel that using rocketears.com on a regular basis would improve your recognition of intervals? If not, why not?

10) Assuming that rocketears.com was more fully featured (chord-type ear training, functional ear training, statistics, etc) would you continue using it? Would you pay for it?

If you took the time necessary to fill all of that out, I am in your debt. Should rocketears.com ever launch as a full product, you will receive free lifetime access.

Thank you,

rocketears.com

P.S. I hope this isn't considered spam. :)

Hey there! I'm glad you are trying something like this. Here's my review:

1) Did the site seem to work properly for you? Yes, very easy to work.

2) What browser are you using? What operating system (and version, if known)? Window 7...Foxfire

3) Have you ever used, or do you presently use an ear training application? If so, which one(s)? In the past

4) What is your estimated level of musical training? Many years...

5) What was the length of time you spent using rocketears.com? About 5 minutes

6) What was your first impression? Simple and functional

7) Did you ever not know what to do? If so, how would you recommend resolving the issue? No...it was well put together

8) Did the audio play back properly? How would you rank the sound quality? Good quality sound

9) Do you feel that using rocketears.com on a regular basis would improve your recognition of intervals? If not, why not? Yes, but I would add more than just two different answers to choose from. That would make it more difficult to choose I think. Give it a little more challenge. Perhaps you could add an option for the number of answers to choose from?

10) Assuming that rocketears.com was more fully featured (chord-type ear training, functional ear training, statistics, etc) would you continue using it? Would you pay for it? I may use it from time to time, but I would probably not pay for it considering the fact that there are loads of free ear training website which have similar applications. It's good though, but people offer it for free. You might want to consider getting your money from ads instead and maybe offering both free and premium accounts. Good luck and good job!

I love the sense of humor on the site! Great for students! Now my review...

1) The site seemed to work properly.

2) I am using Firefox 3.6.13 and Mac OS 10.6.5 (Snow Leopard)

3) The ear training applications I've used before are all on musictheory.net.

4) I'm a pretty musically trained person. I just finished high school, and got a 5 on the AP Music Theory Exam in both the aural and non-aural sections. But get this, my high school doesn't offer a theory course. I studied all on my own with textbooks borrowed from my choral and band teachers. Had it not been for applications like the one you're developing, I would've probably failed the aural portion of the exam.

5) I spent a good 7 minutes on there. Mostly because it just kept going and going with no end in sight. Maybe if you allowed people to check their cumulative scores, they'd know how their doing. All that said, interval training is boring to me because I do it all the time. When I was shopping for a tux for my junior prom, I walked into Men's Warehouse and their door chime rang. "That's a minor third," I said to myself. It would be sweet if you had other sorts of exercises on Rocket Ears. Maybe ear training with chord qualities (maj/min/dim/etc.) or something like that.

6) Great first impression. Easy to use interface, and -- as i said before -- I loved the sense of humor ("the historically loved tritone" "There is no 3!").

7) I knew what to do most of the time. One thing though, when I got a right answer the box would say correct. Then I would click the box thinking that if I clicked it, it would go to the next exercise. But, since it goes to the next one automatically, I ended up accidentally clicking on the wrong answer instead. Maybe if you added something that said "loading next exercise" or "click to continue" it would prevent that from happening.

8) Sound qual was fine. You're obviously not using pro samples, but it's just an ear training program. Gets an A in my book. From 1 to 10 (1 being a chainsaw and 10 being an exceptionally rich and well-tuned grand piano on a great stage with amazing acoustics), I'd say it's a 5. But as I said, you're not playing Debussy over here. It's fine for ear training. Very clear and easy to hear.

9) Using Rocket Ears would definitely help with my ear training. I've used this sort of thing before, and it really does help. It's a great thing you're doing here, btw!

10) I'd most definitely use it or encourage others to use it if it were that fully featured. Don't know if I'd pay for it. Or maybe not that much, because Musictheory.net does a lot of this for free. Still I think yours is more user and student friendly. It would depend on the price.

I can't wait to see what will become of this project (and I look forward to redeeming my "lifetime access" ;) ). Haha, as I said before, it's a really great thing you're doing here!

1) Did the site seem to work properly for you?

Yeap, as far as I could hear/click/do stuff to it.

2) What browser are you using? What operating system (and version, if known)?

Firefox; Windows Vista 32 bit.

3) Have you ever used, or do you presently use an ear training application? If so, which one(s)?

Nope, I've never. Unless being sent to Yamaha when I was a child counts.

4) What is your estimated level of musical training?

I've played piano for more than 10 years, ABRSM Grade 8 practical/Grade 5 theory, and perfect pitch, which kinda defeats the purpose of this site whoops =/

5) What was the length of time you spent using rocketears.com?

5 minutes or so?

6) What was your first impression?

Ooh this is pretty fun, although I was hoping there could be more options like chords, identifying modes etc. I though most intervals would be pretty common sense to most though, so maybe having more options rather than just two?

7) Did you ever not know what to do? If so, how would you recommend resolving the issue?

Nope, it was pretty straightforward.

8) Did the audio play back properly? How would you rank the sound quality?

Yeap it did, and the quality was pretty good actually.

9) Do you feel that using rocketears.com on a regular basis would improve your recognition of intervals? If not, why not?

To be honest, no, but that's only because of me being lucky enough to have perfect pitch

10) Assuming that rocketears.com was more fully featured (chord-type ear training, functional ear training, statistics, etc) would you continue using it? Would you pay for it?

Not for me, but I think it would benefit people who do want to improve their aural skills.

And um a random comment, the site name can be unfortunately parsed as rocke-tears, which although makes no sense, sounds a little odd to me hehe =/

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'll wait for a few more replies before I respond to some of the questions.