Chet is an ear training and music theory app for musicians of all levels. You can compete with other musicians to achieve high scores or play at your own pace in a wide variety of games.
Ear training is the practice of identifying musical concepts, like melodies, scales, and chords, solely through listening. Musicians train their ears because it strengthens the connection they have with their instruments. A musician with a trained ear can easily play back a melody that they hear. They can also improvise over a chord progression they've never heard before, or imagine a melody inside their head and play it on their instrument. By working on ear training, you will vastly improve your skills not only on your instrument, but also in music theory, composition, and improvisation.
The three different modes of Chet are the Path, Library, and Challenges.
In the Path, Chet will guide you through curated learning paths. You can select your path using the drop-down menu located in the upper left-hand corner. We recommend beginner users select 'Getting Started' and intermediate users select 'Next Steps'. Most games in this mode allow you to answer questions at your own pace. To move ahead in the path you will need to earn at least one star per game. If any part of the path feels too easy, you can skip ahead by playing the Checkpoints. Checkpoints have a time limit which requires you to answer questions accurately without going too slowly.
In the Library you can work independently on a variety of topics like intervals, scales, and tunes. You will have around 60 or 90 seconds to answer as many questions as you can.
In Challenges, you can test your overall fluency in timed competitions. Each time you make a mistake, you will get a strike. If you get three strikes or the timer runs out, the game will end. We recommend starting with the 'All-Around' challenge. Challenges are not available to complete beginner users.
If you are a beginner, or someone with little or no experience with ear training and music theory, we recommend starting in the Path. Once you’ve made some progress, try some beginner games in the collections.
For intermediate users, or users with a substantial amount of experience with ear training and music theory, we recommend starting in the Collections. If you prefer guided practice, try ‘Next Steps’ in the Path. If you want to compete in more difficult competitions or test your overall fluency, try some of the Challenges.
For advanced users, or professional level musicians, we also recommend starting in the Collections. If you want to compete in more difficult competitions or test your overall fluency, try some of the Challenges.
In timed games using virtual instruments, you earn 1 point per correctly answered note. If you answer a question 100% correctly, you earn double the points. So a 5 note question answered perfectly gets you 10 points. If you answer a note incorrectly, you will lose one point.
You can boost your points by advancing to higher score multipliers. To get to a 2x multiplier, you need to get 2 questions right in a row. To get to a 3x multiplier, you need to get another 3 questions right in a row, etc. If you have a 3x multiplier, each note will count as 3 points. If you get a note wrong, you will drop one tier on the multiplier. This can only happen once per question.
In timed games using multiple choice, the amount of points you earn per question is determined by the amount of multiple choice options divided by 2. For example, a multiple choice question with 4 options will earn you 2 points. A 5 options MC question will also earn you 2 points (Chet rounds down).
In Challenges, you earn 1 point per question. If you get three questions wrong, or if the timer runs out, the game will end.
In the Getting Started and Next Step Paths, games are usually untimed, generally with a total of 10 questions. Each question is worth 1 point. You cannot lose points by answering questions incorrectly in untimed games.
Practice mode is an unscored and untimed mode where you can work on questions you have struggled with in the past.
The objective in Practice mode is to correctly answer previously failed questions 4 times. After that, those questions will disappear from Practice mode. You can check your progress on questions by clicking on the graph located in the upper right-hand corner.
If you’ve played a game many times before, you might want to practice your mistakes from all of your past games. You can do this by clicking on the drop-down menu located in the upper left-hand corner, and selecting ‘All Game Errors’. If you just played a game and want to practice the mistakes you just made, you can select ‘Last Game Errors’.
The collections of Chet are:
One of the most fun and useful ways to use Chet is with a MIDI keyboard. In order to do this, you’ll need to purchase a ‘USB type B to lightning adapter’ and a MIDI keyboard. We highly recommend the Korg Microkey keyboard, although any USB MIDI keyboard should work.
You can also connect a bluetooth-enabled MIDI keyboard by going to settings, clicking on Bluetooth MIDI settings, and finding your device.
Once you’ve connected your midi keyboard to your phone, you will see a small midi icon in the upper right-hand corner of Chet confirming that your device is connected.
To compete on leaderboards, you’ll need to sign in to Chet. You can do that by clicking on the hamburger icon in the upper right-hand corner, and clicking ‘sign in’.
Some of the scores on Chet are impressively high, and many people wonder how they could even be possible. It’s important to not be discouraged by high scores, and rather use it as inspiration to get better!
To compete for first place, you’ll most likely need to increase your speed to 2x. You can do this during a game by clicking the + button where it says ‘1x tempo’.
You’ll also need to answer questions very quickly, which will take practice and repetition.
Finally, using a MIDI keyboard can increase how quickly you can answer notes. If you’re a pianist and want to compete intensely, we highly recommend connecting with MIDI.
Yes! If you have perfect pitch, or are interested in training your perfect pitch, you can turn on perfect pitch mode in settings. In this setting, the first note of every question won’t be given to you.
First check if the volume of your phone is working on other apps. If not, try restarting your phone.
If other apps have sound, but Chet doesn’t, try closing the app and reopening it.
If that doesn’t help, click on the hamburger icon on the upper right, go down to user settings, and click sound levels. Make sure none of the sounds are set to 0, and if they are, please click the ‘reset’ button on the upper right.
If you’re still having issues, and only if you are signed in on Chet, you can try deleting the app and re-downloading Chet from the App Store. You can then log back in to your account to restore any progress. If you do this without an account, your progress will be lost!
Finally, if you’re still having issues, you can shake your phone, click ‘Report a Bug’, and send in a report to us. You can also email us at support+chet@ensemble-education.com.