Music Intervals and Ear Training
Ear training is an essential skill for all musicians, as it allows them to recognize pitches, chords and patterns in music. This recognition is useful in learning to play pieces without sheet music, improvising good-sounding parts and understanding written music. For those writing music, learning the relationships between intervals is important when writing melodies that make sense and are pleasing to the ear.
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Defining Intervals
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A pitch is the note that occurs at a certain frequency. You can start on any note in music and find the same interval regardless of what note you start on. For instance, if you compare the distance from pitch C to F, then from D to G, the intervals are equal. While the pitches involved are different, they are the same interval apart from each other. All intervals are made up of whole steps and half steps. A half step is the distance between a white key and the black key right above it on a keyboard, while a whole step is the distance between two adjacent white keys that have a black key between them.
Significance of Intervals in Ear Training
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Intervals are the most basic form of music, since melodies are made up of differing intervals between pitches. While training the ear, many music students learn to memorize the sound of different intervals, which assists them in understanding these intervals when hearing them in pieces of music. Musical intervals also make up chords, since all chords are built of simultaneously played notes in intervals.
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Different Types of Intervals
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The types of intervals are as follows: 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th. These numbers refer to the number of notes between two pitches. From here, we can expand to include all the notes in music by adding different qualities to these numbers. A "major" interval is a normal, complete interval. A "minor" interval lowers the distance in a major interval by a half step. A "diminished" interval lowers this distance by two half steps, and an "augmented" interval raises the distance by one half step. When referring to the intervals of a 4th and a 5th, they are commonly referred to as "perfect" instead of major, unless they are lowered or raised by any number of steps. When training the ear, students of music must not only learn to hear the different distances of intervals, but the qualities of these intervals.
Strategies For Interval Ear Training
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When learning to recognize these intervals with your ear, it is handy to find familiar melodies from songs that have certain prominent intervals. The interval of a minor second is featured in the theme from the movie "Jaws." The interval for a perfect fifth is displayed in the first two notes of the melody for the theme from "Star Wars." By exploiting these familiar sounds, ear training students can hasten their progress.
Benefits of Ear Training
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The benefits of training your ear to recognize intervals include increased speed in memorizing new pieces of music, ease in writing and remembering melodies of your own and increased awareness and appreciation of how music is created and performed. By practicing interval training, musicians can develop a more active ear.
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References
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- Photo Credit sheet music image by Dianne Burridge from Fotolia.com
