Tenuto - Music Theory Trainer

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About this app

Tenuto is a music theory trainer built around one idea: theory sticks when you practise it, not when you read about it.

Twenty-five exercises cover the ground, and each one asks the same material a different way. Read it on the stave, write it on the stave, find it on a piano keyboard, find it on a guitar neck, or name it by ear. The same interval you can spot on paper is a different skill to hear, and Tenuto drills both until neither one is guesswork.

WHAT YOU CAN PRACTISE

- Notes - name them on the stave, write them onto it, find them on a keyboard or a fretboard, and name them by ear
- Key signatures - identify them at a glance and build them sharp by sharp, in every mode
- Intervals - simple and compound, all the way to a double octave, every quality from diminished to augmented
- Scales - major, natural, harmonic and melodic minor, all seven modes, pentatonic, blues, whole tone and chromatic
- Chords - triads, sevenths, suspended seconds and fourths, in root position or any inversion

FIVE WAYS TO BE ASKED

Reading and writing are different skills, and so are recognising and finding. Every topic is drilled five ways: identify it on the stave, construct it on the stave, locate it on a piano, locate it on a guitar neck, and identify it by ear. A gap in one shows up quickly once the others are comfortable.

EVERY EXERCISE BENDS TO YOU

Nothing is fixed. Open Customize on any drill and choose the clefs it uses - treble, bass, alto, tenor, soprano, mezzo-soprano, baritone and French violin - the range it draws notes from, whether accidentals appear at all, which intervals or chords or scales it asks about, and how it expects the answer. Narrow a drill down to the one thing you keep getting wrong, then widen it again when you stop. Tenuto remembers the settings for each exercise separately, so the drill you tuned last week is still tuned when you come back to it.

CHALLENGE YOURSELF

Turn on Challenge mode for a run of a fixed number of questions, or against a clock. Tenuto keeps your best score for every exercise, so the ground you have covered is visible rather than remembered, and you can send a progress report to a teacher when one asks for it.

SIX CALCULATORS

Beyond the drills, Tenuto carries reference tools that answer the question directly instead of quizzing you on it: accidental, interval, scale, chord, analysis and matrix calculators. Look up what a diminished seventh on B flat actually spells, what the fifth degree of G major is, or what a dominant seventh looks like written on an alto clef, without leaving the app or opening a book.

BUILT TO BE READ

The stave is drawn with Bravura, the reference music font used by professional engraving software, so every clef, notehead and accidental sits exactly where an engraver would put it rather than approximately where a picture would.

Spelling is taken just as seriously. C to F sharp is an augmented fourth and C to G flat is a diminished fifth. They sound identical and they are not the same interval, and Tenuto knows the difference - which means a diminished seventh chord on B comes back spelled B, D, F, A flat, the way it would be written, not the way it would be easiest to compute.

FOR WHOEVER NEEDS IT

Students working towards a grade, players who read well but have never trusted their ear, teachers who want a drill to set, and anyone who learned an instrument without ever learning what the notes were called.

Works offline. No account, no sign-up.