How to Master Next Tone
TLDR: Next Tone plays the opening of a famous public-domain melody and stops. You pick the tone that comes next. Replay the opening as often as you like and tap each candidate to hear it. The method that beats guessing is to sing the melody on in your head BEFORE you listen to any candidate · decide what should come next, then find the candidate that matches. Listening to the options first replaces your memory of the tune with the last thing you heard.
Why order of operations decides this game
The candidates sit one to four semitones from the right answer, and the harder tiers prefer pitches that belong to the melody’s own key. So every option sounds like it could belong. If you audition them first, you are comparing four plausible notes against a fading memory, and the last one you played has an unfair advantage.
Replay, sing on, then audition: play the opening. Hum or imagine the next note without touching any candidate. Only then tap through the options and pick the one that matches the note you already had. This single change in order is worth more than any amount of ear training.
What the contour dots are for
Pitch dots show the shape of the opening, so you can follow along with the sound off. They are not a substitute for listening · they are a check.
Use the dots to settle direction, not distance. They tell you reliably whether the tune has been rising, falling or holding. If your imagined next note goes up and every candidate above the last note is far away, the dots will show you whether this melody makes leaps or steps · and most of these tunes step.
Most melodies in the pool move by step. Nursery rhymes, folk songs and simple classical themes overwhelmingly move to a neighbouring note. When you have no instinct at all, the candidate nearest the last tone is the better guess · and the reveal will tell you whether this tune was one of the exceptions.
Recognise the tune, and the round is over
The pool is 65 melodies, all public domain and all instantly recognisable · Twinkle Twinkle, Frère Jacques, Ode to Joy, Amazing Grace, Greensleeves, the Entertainer, Alouette, Michael Row the Boat Ashore, Scarborough Fair.
Naming the tune is the strongest possible evidence. If you recognise it, you already know the next note · you just have to hear which candidate it is. Spend the first replay trying to name the melody rather than trying to hear the next note, because naming it answers the question completely.
Caution · the melodies are transposed. A tune may be played in a different key from the one you know, because the game asks for the RELATIVE next tone and the pool moves melodies into a playable window. So the pitch you remember will not match. What matches is the shape · the pattern of steps and leaps · and that survives transposition intact.
What difficulty changes
Two knobs move together. The cut point goes deeper into the melody, so you get less of the recognisable opening and more of the part nobody hums. And the distractors move closer, from three to five semitones away down to one.
On the hardest tier, use the phrase, not the note. A one-semitone distractor is almost indistinguishable in isolation. But sing the whole phrase ending on each candidate and one of them will resolve and the other will not. Judge the ending of the line, never the note on its own.
A practice path
Phase 1 · name it. Easy tier. Spend the first replay identifying the melody. Goal: convert listening into recall.
Phase 2 · sing on first. Every tier. Decide the note before auditioning. Goal: stop the last-heard option from winning.
Phase 3 · step by default. When you have nothing, take the nearest candidate. Goal: play the odds the pool actually offers.
Phase 4 · the phrase test. Hardest tier. Sing the line to each ending. Goal: hear resolution rather than pitch.
The mastery metric
You have mastered Next Tone when you name the tune from four notes, hear the next one before you touch a candidate, and use the options only to find the note you already had.
Next Tone
A famous melody plays its first few notes · pick the tone that comes next. Ear training built on tunes you already know
Play nowWorks on any device.