Peer Review

Good-Ear - online ear training site

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Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: This site offers small servlets that test aural skills. Intervals, Chords,
Scales, Cadences and pitch exercises are given at a variety of skill levels. The exercises are dynamically generated and scored question by question. The material is presented sequentially.
Type of Material:: Servlet based questions generated dynamically.
Recommended Uses:: Drill and practice with Good-ear facilitates the development of aural
discrimination skills. Students should visit often and stay awhile.
Technical Requirements:: Current multimedia browser. Cookies must be enabled.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: These exercises serve as a method for drilling, testing and reinforcing aural skills useful for music majors including interval, chord, scale, cadence and melodic dictation. It also addresses relative and perfect pitch.
Target Student Population:: High School and College
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: As the skill level increases so does the reqired theory knowledge of scales, chords and cadences. Such information is not available in this object but is necessary especially in the identification of complex chords and cadences.

Rating:
Strengths:: The exercises are offered in increasing difficulty and allows for the user to set several practice options like timbre and tempo. This site is for the advanced music student. The later examples require advanced theory. It quickly moves to more advanced musical examples.
Concerns:: There is no supporting materials on how the scales and chords are constructed. But this may not be the intent of this practice site. Perfect pitch section may not work for all students. I personally find that
wind instrument players often can learn to think their "tuning" note for
reference, which may be a better choice than C,D, and E.

Rating:
Strengths:: Students can easily target the areas in which they would like to drill and control the time and focus of their work. The immediate feedback is also very useful. The change in timbre also allows students to test their skills beyond the primary piano sounds. Great site for practicing what one might know theoretically.
Concerns:: With some of the later exercises students will need to know an increasing amount of theory to be able to identify what they hear. This object will require some kind of a theoretical context for the more advanced exercises.

Rating:
Strengths:: The interface is very simple and easy to navigate. It is also very interactive and places the student in control of their practice. The site is very logical. The menu presentation is obvious to those who know the terminology.
Concerns:: It may be frustrating for students if they do not have enough theory to support their practice. However within a broader context where students could pull in that information these exercises can be very effective. The busy background and font size may make it difficult to navigate and read on some
monitor settings.

Other Issues and Comments:: Good-Ear is a free eartraining drill and practice page for anyone who needs help
in developing their aural skills. The material is presented sequentially and
requires a multimedia capabale browser with cookies and javascript enabled.
Good-Ear is easy to use and very accessible. Simplicity in design makes it very
flexible. For students who are familiar with the theory on which this material is constructed, this is a fun site. For those students who are not theoretically solid, this site may not prove as beneficial.
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