Melody detective
A few notes play. Find them on the keyboard — then find out what you were playing.
Play the notes back in order. A wrong note just asks you to try again — nothing is lost. Use your computer keyboard: A S D F G H J K L for the white keys, W E T Y U O P for the black ones, space to hear it again.
Melodies are drawn from the same pool the melody of the day uses — every one is a real piece you can go and learn. Score is kept in this browser.
The gap this closes
Most people who want to play the piano can already hear music perfectly well. What they cannot do is find it. A tune is completely clear in your head and your hands have no idea where it lives — and that gap, not talent and not theory, is what stops people playing by ear.
It closes with practice, and the practice is exactly this: hear a few notes, hunt for them, get it wrong, adjust. Three notes at a time is enough. The hunting is the exercise.
Why octave does not count against you
If the melody goes up a step and you play it up a step an octave lower, you have heard it correctly. That is the skill being trained — the shape of a melody, the pattern of ups and downs and how far. Where it sits on the keyboard is a separate and much easier problem.
Timing is not scored either. A beginner searching for the next key should not be penalised for taking three seconds over it. Play as slowly as you like.
How to be better at it
Sing it back before you touch a key. If you can hum the melody accurately, your ear has it and only your hands are missing. If you cannot hum it, press play again — there is no limit.
Find the first note by trial, then work in steps. Once note one is right, ask a smaller question about note two: higher or lower? By a step or a jump? That is two decisions instead of twelve guesses.
Start at three notes and stay there. Eight notes is not eight times harder, it is much worse than that, because one early mistake makes the rest meaningless. Get three reliable first.
What you are hearing
Every melody comes from a real piece in the library — the same pool the melody of the day draws from, so they are pieces worth recognising. When you finish, the answer links straight to the full piece in letter notes, and you can go and learn the thing you have just spent a minute hunting for.
That is the point of putting this here rather than making it an abstract exercise. The tune you just worked out is a tune you can play.
More free tools: interval ear training, the chord finder, the circle of fifths, and how to learn a piece by ear.