@Rolandson The ear training app is available for iOS, wasn’t available for Android (as per The Justinguitar Ear Trainer App | free guitar lesson from justinguitar.com )
It’s good for learning to ‘hear’ the intervals
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it does not work anymore. It crashes all the time
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“For Happy Birthday the first 6 notes (12 as the first two lines are repeated) are the same aren’t they?”
“Well they sound the same to me. Guess that I’m not getting this one!”
@Stuartw Stuart, (and also to @Jozsef, but to a lesser extent since you said “ My main enemies are the major 2nd and minor 3rd intervals. They tend to sound pretty similar to me in isolation.”)
I’m no expert, but your difficulties made me wonder whether you had mild “tone deafness” or what I find in wikipedia is called “amusia” . According to the wiki article “Studies have shown that congenital amusia is a deficit in fine-grained pitch discrimination and that 4% of the population has this disorder”. If you enjoy music though, you probably only have a mild disorder, since the article claims that individuals with amusia find music to be unpleasant or just noise. If you can distinguish the changes in pitches in tunes like the original Star Wars theme for instance then you may just need to develop your ear for smaller pitch changes.
You might need to start simpler than singing melodies and try to hum or vocalize a sound like lo or la. If you have a tuner app that uses your phone microphone you can hum or sing (vocalize with a consonant and any vowel like lo, la, zo, za, ma, me, etc.) and see what pitch is shown on the tuner. Play an open string on the guitar into the tuner and see what pitch you are playing (to make sure your guitar is tuned 
) and then use your voice and try to match the pitches in the tuner. Then play one of the open strings just above or below that string and repeat. Perhaps with some practice you can get some confidence in singing a pitch and then by grade 2 you can advance to singing all or parts an open position C major scale like “do ra me” as you play the guitar. When you can accurately sing the “doh”, “ray”, “mee”, pitches, then you can sing “do ra” and “do me” to hopefully distinguish between 2nd and 3rd intervals.
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I’m pretty sure that I am tone deaf to some extent which is why don’t like to sing.
I do enjoy music but actually wouldn’t know the original Star Wars theme having never watched them. My natural hearing is shot and now have to aids to help. Not ideal!!
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@Stuartw Stuart, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have used a song reference without a link. I started to say that if you enjoy music then you are not totally tone deaf, but maybe you only hear the beat or rhythm. You mentioned that you have a guitar. If you can hear a difference in the sound between picking the thickest string and one of the thinnest strings then you might benefit from ear training. If you look at the second lesson, Justin provides some reference tones and songs for tone practice. ( SONG REFERENCES FOR INTERVAL EAR TRAINING). Start with octaves and work backwards to 7ths and 6th, etc. (or maybe start with 7ths, since octave are supposed to sound similar).
I saw you had an actual hearing loss problem. I didn’t catch that at first. If you have problems identifying different note pitches but enjoy strumming and playing the guitar, then you can enjoy that without learning ear training or playing melodies or transcribing lead guitar notes by ear. There is a lot you can learn (over a lifetime) and enjoy as a rhythm guitarist without playing lead guitar or improvising. You can also play lead guitar and riffs by using TAB if you enjoy doing that.
I’m sorry if I haven’t been helpful, but I just didn’t want you to get too discouraged.
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Until a few years ago, I hadn’t watched any of the films either, which annoyed the heck out of my wife who is a huge SW geek and a member of the UK Garrison.
I still knew the theme. It’s pretty ingrained in popular culture.
Cheers,
Keith
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Not discouraged at all. Happy to pluck away in my back bedroom whenever I can, learning what I can in the time that I have left, which if my mum and dad are anything to go by could be another 30years.
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Always amazes me what people are in to!
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Yes, I find it all a bit odd. She’s been trying to get me involved, but I have no interest. I occasionally join her to meet up with some of the other members, and the local people (in the UK and Singapore) I have met are very nice, but I still have no interest.
And the thing that winds her up the most: my total disinterest in the films, and yet I managed to get to be an extra on TFA and spent 3 days on set, which she would have given anything to do. 
Cheers,
Keith
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I can recomend the app perfect ear.
They have a sale now. Everything for 3,49 euros. Give it a try. First 10 lessons are free. Has piano and guitar sound.
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Some of us nerds even have tattoos. I also like Star Wars, but, I’m more of a Star Trek man myself, and have a Star Trek: TNG tattoo on my forearm. To keep this relevant… during my one-to-one lesson with Justin, he noticed the tattoo and said that he had watched ST: TNG a lot when he was younger as well. That warmed my heart. 
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I have had a number of false starts at ear training and can’t get past perhaps the first few notes on happy birthday and give up go back to playing the guitar or music theory.
I have decided my ability at recognising the notes is poor at the present time and so this time I am going to jump into lessons and hopefully it will improve and at some time in the future come back to HB. I have the app so hopefully that will help.
Am I doing the right thing?
Michael 
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Matthieu @math07
I knew I would not be alone in finding it difficult.
I got the Ear Training App a while ago but not really tried it until the other day, took me a little while to work how to use it but it looks promising that it might help.
Michael 
Coming from finishing the Beginner Grade 1 Course,
Had a bit of experience from playing my keyboard at home and playing percussion from our school. I don’t have any musical theory knowledge other than knowing how chords work in my keyboard. We also play percussion by just imitating the sound and I love music that I listen to it everyday. With this background:
I was able to play Happy Birthday but in one string and took me around 10min, it was the same notes that Justin played but I wasn’t sure how to play it using other strings and not moving around too much.
I was also able to play Mary had a Little Lamb, Twinkle Twinkle and Jingle Bells with around 20-30mins. But I wasn’t sure if I was in the right key? But for me it sounded how I imagined the song would be.
I’m just confused rn what note I’m playing in the fret. I don’t know what note I’m playing. But I guess the important thing here is to train the ear and follow/imitate the melody. I hope you guys can help me clear this confusion. Open for extra advices and criticisms!
Hi Aris and welcome to the Community! Sorry I read your post but I am not exactly sure about what are you asking about? If it’s what notes are on each fret below diagram should be pretty helpful.
If you are asking if notes knowledge on the fretboard is important at the minute I would say beneficial and important, but not crucial. As you are only on Grade 1 there is still plenty time to get your head around it, although it doesn’t hurt to already start doing that as you progress through the course you will encounter Justin’s Practical Music Theory course which will enlighten all of it to you.
In the meantime why not #community-hub:introduce-yourself to a wider Community? Hopefully you stick around, take care!
Hi Aris and welcome to the community.
Here my two cents on playing wat you hear and what the lesson is about.
Music is structured around intervals, the distance between notes. A song is just a sequence of these intervals. This means that you could play any song starting at any point on the fret board so long as you maintain the same distances between each of the notes and the song will sound correct.
So based on this, asking which key is the “right” key is not meaningful, a song can be played in any and every key. Which note you start with will determine which key you are in (not that that note gives you the key name however) .
As for know which notes you are playing, for the purposes of this exercise it doesn’t matter. Here you are just listening for the relative sounds. For example, if you are playing two notes that are 1 fret apart, it doesn’t matter if it B to C, D# to E or e to F, they all have the same relative sound.
As you progress in music theory you will eventually learn all of the note names, the interval names and understanding keys. But for here, listen only to the sounds.
Glen
Thank you to both of you! Sorry for my unclear questions but you guys got it exactly! I was just worrying about not knowing the notes on the fret and if it was okay to play it without really knowing the right notes or even the key. But you guys cleared it up! Thank you guys!
Also I started the Ear Training first before the Musical Theory, I wonder if this was okay? Just want to finish the Grade 1 of these two so I can proceed to Beginner Grade 2. Thank you again!
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I think perfectly okay to do so, ear training is recognizing intervals and melodies, whereas theory can follow where you will understand where some intervals are coming from and why they are so popular
I’m up for this challenge. Having never taken any musical training I’m a bit uncertain about what Justin says about staying in one position:
Fingering & Position
The first thing to note is that you should try to stay in the one position and not just run up and down one string which is how most people start off trying to get through this exercise. It’s slightly harder but much more beneficial to stay in the same part of the fretboard where you can, obviously if the melody goes higher (or lower) than the notes allow in your position you’ll have to move, but try to stay in the same place.
Does that mean I keep my fretting hand close to the 5th fret (if that’s where I started) with my fingers stretching to frets 6,7,8?
Thanks for this opportunity.
I’m off to “La, La, La” to some notes.