How to Recognize Music Intervals

For ear training experts everywhere, understanding intervals is one of the huge keys. Not only can it help you to figure out how to piece musical melodies and improvisation together, but can also allow you to move into reading music.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Your ear
• A piano
• A song / recording

1. Begin thinking of notes that go to different notes as steps or spaces. For instance, if I play one note, then play the next note above it, that is a step from one note to another. That is the simplified definition of what an interval is.

2. Begin thinking of all intervals in "half steps". With one note to the note closest to it, you have a half step. For instance, if you have access to a piano, you can play a white note, then the black note above it. That is a half step. This is also often times referred to as a 'minor interval.'

3. If you take two half steps and combine it together, you have a whole step. So, if you are at a piano, you go white note, black note, then the next white note above that. From one white note to the other is a whole step. These are also often called 'major intervals.'

4. From here, it's all math. You can combine as many half steps together to get wider spaced intervals, or intervals that are close together. If you think about your spacing, you can always find where the interval is. Your major intervals will add up like this:
   3rd interval: 3 white notes (including the 1st)
   4th interval: 4 white notes
   5th interval: 5 white notes
   6th interval: 6 white notes
   7th interval: 7 white notes

5. All of the intervals above are major intervals, moving away from the bottom space by step. If you want to make any of the intervals minor, simply lower it a half step. Your exception to the rule - the 4th and the 8th (octave). These two don't have minor intervals. They just go to the next major interval down because of the way the pitch is divided.

6. Get a feel for how the different intervals sound, going both up and down. Relate it to something that is simple to remember. For instance, a 3rd interval that goes down will sound like "cuck-oo". A minor 2nd interval going up will sound like "jaws" (the movie theme).

7. Take a simple song, like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and define how the intervals move. First, define whether one note goes to the next by moving up or down. Next, define how much space it has from one to the other.

Tips & Warnings

• Practice finding different intervals every day. The more you do it, the easier it will be to memorize pitch, melodies and other things.
• Take your time! Getting in those perfect pitches and movements doesn't happen over night.

[Thims]

on 10/25/2008 Someone told me once: The interval between the first two note in the wedding March was a 4th. From that moment on I discovered a new world within music.!
Excellent article!