How to learn music: Intervals - learning to play and read music

Learn to play and read music in this lesson. Intervals in music: how to describe the distance between two notes.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• have learn about the musical alphabet and half-steps/whole-steps

1. Review the musical alphabet and sharps and flats. Remember with ascending notes we have A,A#,B,C,C#,D,D#,E,F,F#,G and G#, and with descening notes we have G, Gb, F, E, Eb ,D ,Db ,C ,B ,Bb ,A,Ab.When we go from one tone to its neighboring tone (like C to C#, or E to F, or G to Gb) that distance is called a half-step. When we go from one tone to a tone two spots away (like C to D, or E to F#, or G to A) that distance is called a whole step. I will give the following examples in C

2. Describe 2nds: Minor 2nd = 1h [C to Db]/ Major 2nd = 1w[C to D] (h=half-step, w= whole-step)

3. Describe 3rds: Minor 3rd = 1w + 1h OR 3h[C to Eb ] / Major 3rd = 2 Whole steps OR 4h [C to E ]

4. Describe 4ths: Diminished 4th = 2w OR 4h [C to Fb]/ Perfect 4th = 2w + 1h OR 5h [C to F]/ Augmented 4th = 3w OR 6h [C to F# ]

5. Describe 5ths: Diminished 5th = 3w OR 6h [C to Gb]/ Perfect 5th = 3w + 1h OR 7h [C to G ] / Augmented 5th = 4w OR 8h [C to G#]

6. Describe 6ths: minor 6th = 4w OR 8h [C to Ab] / Major 6th = 4w + 1h OR 9h [C to A]/ Augmented 6th = 5w OR 10h [C to A#]

7. Describe 7ths: minor 7th = 5w OR 10h [C to Bb ]/ Major 7th = 5w + 1h OR 11h [C to B]/ Augmented 7th = 6w OR 12h [C to B# ]

8. Intervals above an 8th are called compound intervals. Lean about compound intervals to expand your intervallic knowledge.

Tips & Warnings

• many notes are equal. An augmented sixth sounds like a minor seventh. An augmented 4th sounds like a diminished 5th.
• Be careful, When a perfect interval is lowered a half step it becomes diminished, not minor!