LEVEL ONE EAR-TRAINING EXERCISES: LESSON TWO

Hearing intervals PART ONE - How to identify intervals

Another tried-and-true method of ear training is Interval Recognition. An interval is the measure of the distance between two notes. For this method to be really effective, it helps to first know how to name your intervals, to be able to identify them on the staff, and to know really your major scales off by heart (in every key!).

how intervals work

Watch this video to learn how to identify and name intervals properly.

We'll look at this in some depth before we move on to learning how to HEAR and SING these intervals.

Intervals are the the measure of a distance between two notes. Harmonic intervals describe the relationship when two notes are played at the same time, and melodic intervals are when the notes happen one after the other. Here are some examples:

Harmonic intervals

Measure the distance between two notes played at the same time

Melodic intervals

Measure the distance between two notes played consecutively

We describe intervals in two ways; distance and quality. It's fairly easy to measure the distance between two notes on a score; simply count up the lines and spaces between the two notes. Remember to count the line or space that the each of the notes are on. (This is different from counting in semitones, where we don't count the starting note). This works because the system of notation is designed so that every note (or degree) in any major or minor scale has it's own line or space. We think of the bottom note as being the tonic (first note) of a scale, and count up lines and spaces (steps up the scale) to get to the top note.

Notice that in all the scales above, every scale goes from line to space, space to line until it gets back to the octave (8th note). Every degree in the scale has it's own unique place on the stave. When we're counting up intervals, we're counting up degrees in the scale. We imagine that the bottom note is the root of a scale, and count how many steps up that scale we need to move in order to reach the next note.

Name the distance between these notes:

Intervals+Treble+Clef (1).pdf

Measuring Intervals - Treble Clef

Intervals+Bass+Clef.pdf

Measuring Intervals Bass clef

Identifying the quality of an interval

All of these intervals are a type of fifth interval, however they are all different distances, and sound quite different from each other. We therefore need a system to help describe these differences

Identifying the QUALITY of an interval is a little bit trickier than measuring distance, but it's easy if you:

1) know your major scales and key signatures and

2) can memorise and follow some fairly simple rules.

There are five types of interval quality;

Major (M), Perfect (P), Minor (m), Diminished (o) and Augmented (+).

Our reference point is the major scale.

An important first step is to be able to measure the distance from TONIC of a major scale to each note of the scale, and know how to describe the quality of this relationship.

The intervals from the tonic to the other notes of the major scale are called DIATONIC INTERVALS ('dia' is a greek word meaning 'related to' so diatonic = 'related to the tonic'. In music this usually means that all the notes come from the same scale).

Below are diatonic intervals in the key of C

If you look at the ways these intervals are labelled, you'll notice that there are two types of diatonic interval: Major and Perfect. Within one octave, there are four perfect and four major intervals.

Perfect intervals in the major scale are: Perfect Unison, Perfect Fourth, Perfect Fifth, and Perfect Octave.

The Major intervals are Major Second, Major Third, Major Sixth and Major Seventh.

(These are then repeated up the octave).

DIATONIC INTERVALS WORKSHEET

Non-Diatonic intervals

The rules for naming intervals get a little trickier once we get to non-diatonic intervals - in the key of C, we can think of non-diatonic intervals as the distance between C and all the black notes on the piano, as none of these notes are in the C major scale.

The rules for naming these distances are:

If you make a perfect interval smaller by one semitone, it becomes diminished. For instance the distance from C - G is a perfect 5th, therefore the distance from C - Gb is a diminished 5th. . (Just to complicate things, this interval is also sometimes referred to as a 'Tritone', because a diminished 5th can be broken up into 3 whole-tone steps.)

If you make a major interval smaller by one semitone it becomes a minor interval. For example C - E is a major third interval, but C - Eb is a minor third.

If you make a Major or Perfect interval bigger by one semitone, it is called an Augmented interval. For example, C-F is a distance of a perfect 4th, but C - F# is an Aumented 4th interval. Similarly, C - A is a major 6th interval; C - A# is an augmented interval.

Using these rules we can now name every interval in the octave.