Relative Pitch

Relative pitch is the ability to identify a note by its relationship to other notes—specifically, to the tonic of a key. It's what lets musicians play by ear, transpose on the fly, and hear what's coming before they play it.

Unlike absolute pitch (identifying an isolated note with no reference), relative pitch is trainable. Most professional musicians rely on it constantly, whether they think about it that way or not.

What Relative Pitch Sounds Like

When you've developed relative pitch, you don't just hear "the melody went up." You hear "that's the 5 moving up to the 3." Each scale degree has a character—the 7 pulls upward toward the tonic, the 4 has an aching quality, the 5 feels stable but expectant.

These aren't just poetic descriptions. With practice, you genuinely hear these qualities. A note doesn't just sound higher or lower than the last one—it sounds like a specific position in the key, with all the feeling that implies.

This is the foundation of playing by ear. When you hear a melody and can identify each note's scale degree, you know what to play. When you can't, you're just guessing.

Why I Built Tonic Sense

I spent years doing interval training with various apps. I got good at identifying isolated intervals, but I still couldn't play a song by ear quickly enough to keep up. The skill wasn't transferring.

The problem was that intervals alone don't tell you where you are in a key. A major third could be 1-3 or 5-7 or 4-6. Knowing the interval doesn't tell you which keys to press.

I wanted an app that would play real melodies—not random notes—and let me practice identifying scale degrees in context. I also wanted to practice on a piano keyboard, in any of the 12 keys, so I could build the mental map that most pianists never develop.

I couldn't find that app, so I built it myself. That's Tonic Sense.

How Tonic Sense Works

Tonic Sense uses melodic dictation to train relative pitch. You hear a short melody—usually a folk song, hymn, or children's tune—and identify the notes.

There are three ways to practice:

Solfege (Do Re Mi) — the traditional approach, especially useful for singers and for communicating with other musicians.

Numeric scale degrees (1 2 3) — connects directly to chord thinking and music theory. If you analyze progressions as I-IV-V, numbers may feel natural.

Piano keyboard — you play the melody back on a keyboard in any of the 12 major keys. This is the method I use most. It builds the ear-to-hand connection that lets you actually play what you hear.

Getting Started

Before you can identify scale degrees, you need to find the tonic—the home note that everything else relates to. I wrote a guide on 7 ways to listen for the tonic with playable examples.

Once you can find the tonic reliably, start with the basic overview lessons. You'll try each practice method—solfege, numbers, and keyboard—so you can see which one fits how you think about music.

The melodies are simple on purpose. The goal isn't technical challenge; it's building the ear skill that makes everything else easier.