Tenuto is the companion app to musictheory.net: a one-off purchase of a few pounds that gets you 24 exercises and six calculators covering note identification, key signatures, intervals, chords, scales and ear training. It is excellent at that and has been for years. It is not a sight-reading app, does not claim to be, and the only reason this page exists is that people searching for reading practice keep finding it. SightReader puts real graded music in front of you and marks what you play over MIDI.
Full disclosure: we make SightReader. Theory and reading are different problems, and the section below is about telling which one you have.
Want to know your reading level? The three-minute placement check is free.
What is Tenuto actually for?
Different jobs
Sight reading is a performance skill: unfamiliar music, at tempo, once, with your hands doing the work while your eyes are already a bar ahead. It is trained by doing it, repeatedly, with something telling you what went wrong.
Theory drilling is knowledge work: what key has four sharps, what interval is a diminished fifth, which chord is that. It is trained by repetition on screen, and it makes reading faster because it turns things you have to work out into things you simply know.
Tenuto sits firmly in the second category. It is not competing with SightReader; it is upstream of it.
Worth being clear about the boundary: SightReader is a reading tool and does not teach theory or ear training. Its note and chord drills cover recognition and its scales mode covers patterns, both free, and that is where it stops. If theory itself is the gap, drill it with Tenuto or Musicca and come back when the problem is reading at tempo.
Side by side
| SightReader | Tenuto | |
|---|---|---|
| What it trains | ||
| Reading whole pieces at tempo | ✓ | ✗ |
| Note, interval and chord identification | Notes & Chords, free | 24 exercises |
| Ear training | ✗ | ✓ |
| Theory reference and calculators | ✗ | Six calculators |
| How it grades you | ||
| How it listens | MIDI, exact | On-screen answers |
| Independent rhythm scoring | Yes — on-time %, early/late split, ms tendency | ✗ |
| Material | ||
| Exam-syllabus alignment | ABRSM Initial–8 (aligned, not affiliated) | ✗ |
| Library | 4,000+ real pieces | n/a — exercises |
| Bring your own music | Any MusicXML file (Pro) | ✗ |
| Practical | ||
| Free tier | 54 pieces, both modes | musictheory.net is free on the web |
| Price | £5/mo or £48/yr | $4.99 one-off |
| Platforms | Any browser, iOS, Android | iOS |
| Teacher and class tools | ✓ | ✗ |
If you want the reading half, the free tier covers it — 54 real pieces, no card.
When Tenuto is the better choice
You need theory. Key signatures, intervals, chord quality, scale degrees. That is its whole purpose and it is very good at it.
You want ear training. Tenuto has it; SightReader is a reading tool and does not.
You want to spend $4.99 once. Fair enough — it is a lot of theory drilling for the money.
You are working towards a theory exam rather than a practical one. Different exam, different tool.
When is SightReader the better choice?
And if you want the opposite of that
If you know your theory and the problem is that a page of music still stops you dead, drilling intervals will not fix it. Reading fixes reading.
FAQs
Is Tenuto a sight-reading app?
No, and it does not present itself as one. Tenuto is the companion app to musictheory.net: 24 exercises and six calculators covering note identification, key signatures, intervals, chords, scales and ear training. It is a theory and ear-training drill set. Sight reading — playing an unfamiliar piece at tempo while something marks it — is a different activity that Tenuto does not attempt.
How much does Tenuto cost?
Tenuto is a one-off purchase, listed at $4.99 when we checked on 1 August 2026, on iOS. The musictheory.net website itself is free. SightReader is £5 a month or £48 a year with a permanent free tier of 54 pieces.
Does Tenuto work with a MIDI keyboard?
Tenuto’s exercises are answered on screen — identifying notes, intervals and chords, or hearing and naming them — rather than by playing an instrument into it. SightReader is built around MIDI input and marks what you actually play, note by note and beat by beat.
Should I use Tenuto and SightReader together?
They fit together neatly. Tenuto builds the underlying knowledge — key signatures, intervals, chord quality, ear training — that makes reading faster, and SightReader gives you the reading practice with a marked result. Neither replaces the other, and at $4.99 Tenuto is cheap enough that the question is really just whether you need theory work.
Does SightReader have theory or ear training?
No, and it is a real gap. SightReader has note and chord recognition drills and scale practice, all free, but no theory curriculum and no ear training. If you want those, Tenuto or Musicca will serve you better, and Musicca is free.
How we checked
Tenuto details come from musictheory.net’s own product and feature pages and the App Store listing, read on 1 August 2026. The price is the US list price on that date. Where we say a feature is absent, we looked for it in the vendor’s own material and did not find it. SightReader figures are our own.
Elsewhere: SightReader vs Musicca, SightReader vs Notevision, and the best sight-reading apps for piano.
