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Personally, I thought the ear Training was WAY harder then the scales and arpeggios. don't let them scare you, they are pretty basic until you get up into 5 and later.

The ear training is the toughest part for me. It seems to turn more into memorization practice on most things (currently at Method 4-D and Technique 3-E).

I don’t mind the ear training. I’m probably doing it all wrong and I doubt I'll miraculously be able to play by ear but I do think I’m learning something.

I usually do the access once and then practice each tune until I can get them right. Since the same tunes keep cropping up (Somewhere over the Rainbow, Superman theme, etc) I have them memorised.
For me, the difficult part is not so much hitting the right note but hitting it with the correct finger and being in a good position to play the rest of the piece.

Yeah, the ear training parts are quite hard and I catch myself memorizing the notes just so that I can move forward. I'll just have to try harder to listen to notes and try to learn from them.
I am going through level 2 fast and it will be done in a few days for sure because most of the things I already learned through Alfred's book.
I have about 3 weeks of trial period left....should I upgrade immediately or use all of my free trial? I don't know if I would have more benefit from a full membership (are there some things different in paid membership in this lower levels)?
I really like it...and it's a good change after doing AIO.

The ear training is where I have to give up fighting the system, suspend disbelief, hope that there is some value in it, and just go along with the teachers who designed it. It always causes me to curse and fail until I have slowly memorized the exercise. But sometimes there is a difference between hating something and that something having no value. I'll be thrilled if they day comes when I can breeze through the ear training.

It may be worth mentioning that the only reason I started this journey was because I never could just hear a song and figure it out (on guitar). Now I keep at it because it's the only thing in an average day that actually 'exercises' my post middle aged brain. Does anyone else get brain cramps?

My ear training usually ends in memory training. (brain cramps) And yet ... I still think it's doing something good. I used to have 0.0 musical hearing, but after the exercises in PM it is a bit better. If I now edit something from a PDF and I listen to it, I immediately hear when there is an incorrect note somewhere. So improved to 0.01. It can also help to try to play simple songs (that are not in your memory) like happy birthday or twinkle twinkle. Every bit helps

Finally did Hanon #5 with left hand today.

It was a weird experience as I felt that I needed to switch off my brain in order to do it as the brain seemed to get in the way and couldn’t keep up.

Yep, but master one measure and all you have to do is move up one note and the next one's the same.

A big problem for me was timing the gap between ascending and descending but by far, my biggest problem was the very last note.

I may be a minority but I found the interval ear training really useful, it's something I lacked. I have a much better ability to understand relative pitches now. The "mnemonic songs" they use stuck with me after so many iterations, and I can use them to identify intervals that I couldn't before. My biggest complaint about the ear training was when they threw you in to chords and didn't give you any sort of mnemonic to identify them. They just play them and you hope you can guess them. This was much less successful for me, and though I can do some discrimination, like minor vs major, I can't usually identify the others like diminished vs augmented. I wish there was more info on how to do this, and that it had more exercises. It seemed like they had tons of interval training, then just kind of paid lip service to chords.

congrats. i actually enjoy that song and think it is one of the best in the 3rd level.

I finished 3E in method and technique with 100% today. I have been really enjoying it and improving noticeably.

Highlights: I like quite a few of the songs and couldn’t have imagined being able to play them in the recent past. Morning mood and satin gloves are a couple of good ones.

Low points: I absolutely hated all the “learn by rote” songs and couldn’t wait for them to be over. I really hope there won’t be any more.

My goals now are to keep having fun, get my streak into the 100s, and find a teacher locally when the pandemic situation is better here.

I am really hating the ear training parts..everything goes relatively smoothly but I spend a lot of time on ear training, hope I see the benefit of them in the future because they make me frustrated at the moment. I am the type who has to get 100% on every lesson.
How much harder wiill the ear training parts be in higher levels if they create such a problem in level 2? Don't even wanna think about it...
I finished level 2 and before I start level 3 I decided to go through technique and method books for level 2 as an additional pratice.
If there weren't any ear training lessons I would enjoy this app much more.

View the ear training as memory training, then it is much less bad. And memory training is also useful when you learn to play the piano, right?

Finally 100% on Sunrise in 4-E. That took a few days.

Congrats! how long have you been playing?

this one?

Yes, except the 4-E version doesn't modulate like that.

I've been playing (again) about 5 months. There were also 5 years in the 1970s...

thanks.

noobie here as well, about 2 months in using flowkey, alfred's, sight-reading books & just grabbed a couple faber books. I haven't found something 'all encompassing' just yet, maybe without a teacher there isn't one self teaching method that has it all or maybe my OCD just tells me MORE!!!

You can try Piano Marvel for free 1 month ... ideal for an OCD. The drive to get 100% everywhere and gold trophies is so great that you learn to play the piano without even realizing it https://pianomarvel.com/

Personally, I think a total newbie should get lessons from a human being to establish proper fundamentals. YMMV.