Higher or lower?

How the game works

It starts easy: three semitones, the gap between the first two notes of a lot of folk songs. Every right answer makes the next step a little smaller, every miss makes it bigger again, so the game settles where your ear is right now. A hundred cents is one semitone, one piano key. Below that the tones fall between the keys.

Once the step is small, a third answer appears: "Sounds the same". It doesn't break your run, it just gives you a bigger step back. Saying so is better than guessing.

What's a good step?

With headphones in a quiet room, most people get down to about 20 or 30 cents. Musicians who tune by ear often hear 10 or less. A phone speaker in a busy room makes everyone worse, and so does a tired evening. It's a game, not a verdict: play again tomorrow and see where it lands.

Questions

Is this a hearing test?

No. It plays with how you hear differences in pitch, not how quiet a sound you can hear. If you worry about your hearing, see an audiologist or your doctor.

Does it get harder forever?

It gets as hard as your ear allows. The step stops at 3 cents, which nearly nobody hears on a phone.

Then make something of it

Your ear tells up from down. That's all you need to hum a line into Brumm and hear it become an instrument in a track. No account, no upload.

Nothing you answer is kept or sent. How the site counts visits.