GNU Solfege - free ear training software 


2012-02-02

Latest devel release: 3.21.1

2011-11-08

Added Google+ page!

2011-10-21

Latest stable release: 3.20.4

GNU Solfege

GNU Solfege is an ear training program written to help you train intervals, chords, scales and rhythms. It is free software and part of the GNU Project. The program is indented to help music students with their ear training.

Some of the existing exercises:

If this is not enough for you, Solfege is written to make it easy to extend or modify the existing exercises, or write completely new ones. Each chord in the chord exercises are defined similar to this:

 question { name=_i("chord|m7") chord("c' es' g' bes'") }

More details are found in the GNU Solfege user manual.

User comments

Posted by Carl Yaffe on June 8, 2011, 5:41 a.m.

Cadenses???

Posted by Tom Cato on June 8, 2011, 5:59 p.m.

Yes, there is _one_ exercise, but we need more.

Posted by Tom Cato on June 9, 2011, 11:35 p.m.

Ok, someone whispered me that you probably wondered about the spelling. Fixed now:-)

Posted by Juan Cho on June 13, 2011, 3:59 a.m.

Hi. Are there melodic dictation exercises in solfege? Exercises where I choose one or more keys, and then have solfege generate a short melody which I then have to playback?

Thanks.

Posted by Tom Cato on June 14, 2011, 2:42 p.m.

We don't have dictation exercises where the programs generates the music. Someone have to enter real music into the exercises (lesson files). But generated dictation is possible to add, only I have thought that exercises written by a music teacher would be much better than a bad music generated by software.

But since no-one yet writes the lesson files we need, adding dictation of generated music sounds like a good idea. I have filed this as bug #233 (http://bugs.solfege.org/233)

Posted by suso on June 20, 2011, 11:24 a.m.

what is the comment system you use, please?

Posted by tom on June 21, 2011, 2:11 p.m.

The comments system included with Django:
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/comments/

Posted by Andreas on July 12, 2011, 10:52 p.m.

Hey there, first of thanks for this program it is great! For me as a hobby musician it offers absolutely everything I need, thank you!

Hey I got a question, could I help with adding dictation of generated music in some way? I study computational linguistics and have basic programming experience in Python and Java (up to basic knowledge about OOP). If I can help in some way please let me know.

Thanks for your work!

Posted by Tom Cato on July 13, 2011, 3:11 p.m.

Andreas, help writing functions to generate music would be really nice. Let's discuss this on the mailing list, solfege-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

Posted by B. Flat on July 17, 2011, 9:37 p.m.

Guys, one of the best things you could do, is writing a wrapper for 'Rockbox'.

http://www.rockbox.org/

Imagine Solfege on your mp3-player or mobile!! I made the suggestion also to the Rockbox guys ;-). Get together!

Posted by littlemathteacher on July 25, 2011, 12:50 p.m.

You/we should establish a database for self-written exercises. There is a lack of more interesting chord progressions. And the examples of cadences are bad. Never ever e. g. does a deceptive cadence sound thus bad and inconvincing. One should take individual real life examples from the harmony textbook. Even better would be a midi->exerciseformat transformer.

Posted by Joe H on July 26, 2011, 3:55 a.m.

I wish the Rhythm exercise could be configured so that instead of it just generating random rhythms using "clicks", it could be configured so that rhythms are played using random pitches (e.g.- from a scale that is selected by the user). Essentially a simple random generated melody is played with the scales and rhythms set by the user. The user then decides what rhythms were played in the melody. Any way that feature could be incorporated into future Solfege releases?

Posted by ALEX on Aug. 23, 2011, 6:56 a.m.

hello, i would like to know if Solfege is already available for the Android platform? thank you.

Posted by Tom Cato on Aug. 24, 2011, 10:01 p.m.

No, there is no andoid port available. It is not that easy to do, since Solfege is written in Python using Gtk+.

Posted by eyal on Aug. 28, 2011, 12:07 p.m.

what is a mma that requierd in the exercises and how do i get it?

Posted by JAlmer on Aug. 28, 2011, 2:07 p.m.

Great Work and many Thx for this programm.
I used this programme together with http://de.appbrain.com/app/interval-recognition/uk.co.marchantpeter.intervalrecognition on my Android and there evolved 3 items for improvement:

Is it possible to include a listen mode,
e.g. you can listen to the different intervalls by clicking on the buttons?

Is it possible to include first lines of songs for the intervall exercise, like Stars Wars for 5th?

Is it possible to use another sound for the csound intonation-exercises?

Posted by Chris on Sept. 2, 2011, 10:51 p.m.

Is GNU Solfege going to be available as an app for any or all cellular devices?

Posted by Tom Cato on Sept. 2, 2011, 11:44 p.m.

There are no plans for a port to iOS or android at the moment. It is a lot of work, and my time is limited. But others are welcome to port Solfege if they want.

Posted by Natalia on Sept. 11, 2011, 4:27 p.m.

Excelent software!!
I play saxophone, could you include into you instruments, its would be greats?

Posted by Low Fat Meals on Sept. 17, 2011, 5:03 p.m.

Hey, I can’t view your site properly within Opera, I actually hope you look into fixing this.

Posted by Pally on Sept. 22, 2011, 8:07 a.m.

Is there a way to have selectable keys for the Solfa syllables exercise (or would it be hard to implement)? For example, the basic 7 syllable exercise is in C Major, but I would love to be able to set D Major or G Major, since those are particularly relevant to the Chinese instrument I'm presently studying. The random-key option is interesting, but beyond my level for now.
Thanks for all your hard work. Your software has been a huge help and a joy to use over the years.

Posted by KFritz on Oct. 13, 2011, 7:27 p.m.

Linux newbie here. I installed GNUS fr/ the Ubuntu Software Center. What appears on my screen does not look like what's illustrated in the Manual. It tells me something about a MIDI file. I installed Timidity, which is nearly incomprehensible to a non-geek.

That aside, does GNUS work in a 64 bit computer?

Posted by Tom Cato on Oct. 21, 2011, 9:43 p.m.

KFritz, for support I suggest you email solfege-devel@lists.sf.net
Attach a screenshot if you can, or a least give us the exact error message.

Timidity can be installed from the software center, and yes, Solfege works on 64 bit systems.

Posted by markfullerdillon on Oct. 26, 2011, 7:23 p.m.

Is there a way to slow down the tempi of the rhythm dictation exercises? As they stand right now, they're much too fast for a beginner like me.

Posted by Graterol Ivor W. on Oct. 28, 2011, 2:37 p.m.

Excelente Software, lo puse en práctica y es genial

Posted by Tom Cato on Oct. 30, 2011, 6:20 p.m.

Mark, there is no way to change the speed of those exercises now. But I see we need it, so it will be added eventually.

Posted by lion on Nov. 13, 2011, 10:35 p.m.

Hello,

I used my own lessons files (about cadence progressions ) ,unfortunately this kind of scripts don't work now with the last version of gnu solfege (and surly before ) .Is it possible to make a "how to" for people who have like me the same problem , and aren't geeks ? Yes ,I think that people usually ask questions like that ,but I don't find anything for me in the user manual .

Thanks

Posted by Tom Cato on Nov. 14, 2011, 12:06 a.m.

Lion, can you send me the lesson file that causes you problems, and describe what goes wrong? Email it to tca@gnu.org. If so, I'll update it for the latest version of Solfege, and see what I can do to improve the docs or make Solfege handle the old files.

Posted by Trainer on Nov. 23, 2011, 4:45 a.m.

Great! thanks for the share!
Hellen

Posted by best elliptical machine on Nov. 28, 2011, 1:19 p.m.

I suggest adding a facebook like button for the blog!
Helen

Posted by Tim on Nov. 29, 2011, 12:15 a.m.

I have a lesson program that I have created in an open office (calc) spreadsheet. I am trying to hyperlink to the solfege program from within the spreadsheet.

Currently the hyperlink does nothing. The link is pointed to the desktop icon. Is there a way to make it work? Or, another file that I should point to?

Posted by Pedro J. Ponce de León on Dec. 2, 2011, 2:08 a.m.

Great piece of music software! Hours of fun!

What about a 'blind' mode? Like that you could select an exercise, then close your eyes, and run thru the new-repeat-guess cycle by using some 'fixed' keyboard key bindings. Some keys grouped together so they fit under your hand (like the cursor keys or the keypad). I found I concentrate much more on the music with closed eyes, when I don't need to look for the right button on the screen.

Thanks a lot for the good job!

Posted by radam on Dec. 10, 2011, 8:37 p.m.

Finding such a program was hard. But here it is.
And it's PERFECT. I was looking for something like this for ages.
The internet is filled with lies and bullshit, nowadays.
But it does what I want and even more. Thanks.

Posted by Mark on Dec. 19, 2011, 1:17 a.m.

Unless my ears are fooling me (not impossible), there seems to be a bug in the 3.20.4 "Practise" section devoted to fourths and fifths: fifths are misidentified as fourths, and vice versa.

Posted by Tom Cato on Dec. 19, 2011, 8:29 a.m.

Mark, I checked the harmonic and melodic interval exercises of Solfege 3.20.4, and they are all correct. Are you running the program in English or translated to another language? Which? It could be a translator bug.

Posted by Mark on Dec. 20, 2011, 11:34 a.m.

Hello, Tom! I'm running the program in English, on Windows XP... and the P4s are definitely being labelled as P5s... not consistenly, but frequently enough to suggest that something's wrong. It's not my ears: I've also tried other software (and a good old-fashioned piano), and I've had no similar problem there. Any advice?

Posted by Nick on Jan. 1, 2012, 4:21 p.m.

This is really awesome! :D

Posted by whatever on Jan. 20, 2012, 10:58 p.m.

I've made a wikipedia article for the software, feel free to improve it and translate it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Solfege

Posted by roopzelebluby on Jan. 25, 2012, 4:52 a.m.

Hurrah! In the end I got a website from where I can genuinely take valuable information regarding my study and knowledge.

Posted by Sylvain on Jan. 25, 2012, 1:16 p.m.

Hello Tom,

I've made a french draft wikipedia article for the software, from the english page (thanks to "whatever").
Feel free to improve it and translate it.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Solfege

Great Work and many Thx for this program.

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