Ear training/Intervals

Lessons in Ear training

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Intervals

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Ear Training: Intervals

Introduction

Learning intervals is arguably the most fundamental and important part of ear training. Not just recognizing specific intervals but feeling where the melody goes next is crucial for dictation, triad and chord constuction, sight singing, and all that jazz.

An interval is simply the distance between two pitches. There are 12 unique pitches in Western music (not counting the octave), and therefore only 12 intervals (not counting invervals greater than an octave). The difficulty lies in that they each have several ways of being written, which seemingly creates many more. For example, a minor sixth is also an augmented fifth and so forth. But these are easy to do once the rules become apparent. For now (and in general) one only needs to focus on the main notation.

12 intervals: Listening to the ogg version is less likely to require a file download

Interval	Written as	AKA	midi	ogg
Perfect Unison	P1	Unison	Unison.mid
Minor Second	m2	min 2nd	minor_2.mid
Major Second	M2	maj 2nd	major_2.mid
Minor Third	m3	min 3rd	minor_3.mid
Major Third	M3	maj 3rd	major_3.mid
Perfect Fourth	P4	4th	perfect_4.mid
Tritone	TT	aug 4, dim 5	tritone.mid
Perfect Fifth	P5	5th	perfect_5.mid
Minor Sixth	m6	min 6th	major_6.mid
Major Sixth	M6	maj 6th	minor_6.mid
Minor Seventh	m7	min 7	minor_7.mid
Major 7th	M7	maj 7	major_7.mid
Perfect Octave	P8	8va	octave.mid

Recognizing

Recognizing By Ear

For recognizing Intervals, one can use a few different methods. Simply memorizing them (through drill and kill) may be effective for some, but for most of us, it is more useful to use association. You've probably heard these intervals all your life, and maybe you've attatched some innate feeling or emotion to some. Example - major 6ths sound sweet to some people, and minor 6ths may sound distraught, depressed, longing. Tritones (augmented 4th or diminished fifth) to some may remind some of the 8bit sound in video games when your ship crashed, to others it may sound horrible, especially when played simultaneously (in the middle ages tritones were connected with Satan for their dissonance), still others may recognize them as the note that leads into a perfect 5th, and remember the opening theme to "The Simpsons" or the song "Maria" from West Side Story ("THE - SIMP" and "MA - RI") are tritones. There are many examples in popular music both for intervals going up and going down.

Mnemonics for Intervals:

Interval	Ascending	Descending
Minor Second	The "Jaws" Theme, As Time Goes By; The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the 1st 2 notes of the melody played over the title card of all 3 movies, the 1st 2 notes of the Barad-dûr leitmotif from the same film trilogy	First two notes of Für Elise, Chopin Prelude #18 (F Minor)
Major Second	Ascending Major Scale, Strangers in the Night, Do Re Mi	Three Blind Mice, Hot Cross Buns, Mary Had a Little Lamb
Minor Third	Greensleeves, "O-CAN-ada", Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' ("Rawhide")	"HEY-JUDE", Beatles song, first two notes of the emperor's theme from Star Wars. Used in children's call and response songs, "na na na boo boo"
Major Third	"KUM-BY-a", For He's a Jolly Good Fellow, When the Saints Go Marching In	Goodnight Ladies, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, The 3rd quarter of the Westminster Quarters clock chime melody
Perfect Fourth	"HERE-COMES" the bride, "SPEAK SOFT-ly love (Godfather Theme)", "A-MAzing Grace"	Bassline of Pachelbel's Canon, Kettledrum part in "2001: A Space Odyssey" theme
Tritone	"MA-RI-a", "THE-SIMP" sons	The guitar intro to Purple Haze
Perfect Fifth	"Twinkle-Twinkle" little star, Theme from Star Wars, Georgie Girl	"Feelings", "Louie Louie" (First two notes of intro), Theme from Back to the Future, Theme from Game of Thrones
Minor Sixth	Third and Fourth notes of the theme from "Love Story", "Trampled Rose" by Allison Krauss/Robert Plant, The Lonely Man from The Incredible Hulk (a.k.a Sad walking away music), "We Are Young" Fun ("...set this world on FI...RE")	First two notes of the theme from "Love Story", "100 years" Five for Fighting ("I'm FIF...TEEN for a moment")
Major Sixth	"N-B"C, NBC theme; "MY-BON-nie lies over the ocean", Chopin Prelude # 7, "IT-CAME" upon a midnight clear, "Two of Us" The Beatles (beginning guitar part), The Entertainer by Scott Joplin	"NIGHT-TIME sharpens" from Phantom of the Opera.
Minor Seventh	- Blues-y scale (Dominant 7) 1 3 5 m7; First two notes of "Somewhere" from West Side Story; Euphonium motif in The Land Before Time(1) Intro (near 1:30s); "Can't Stop" Red Hot Chile Peppers -guitar riff.
Major Seventh	"I'LL BE" gone ("Take On Me" A-ha); the 3rd last & 2nd last notes of "MA-RI-a" from West Side Story
Perfect Octave	"SOME-WHERE" over the rainbow, Contrapunctus 9 From the Art of the Fugue
Minor Ninth	First 2 notes of "Doctor Qui" (Bill Bailey), Killing in the Name (Rage Against the Machine)

Recognizing Written Intervals

Written intervals can be recognized in several ways. One method is to count how many half steps are between 2 notes (e.g 7 half steps is a perfect fifth, 1 half step is a minor second). Another method is to compare the interval to the location on the scale of the key note. For example, C and A form a major 6th, as A is the 6th note on C major scale. D and F would form a minor third, as F is a half step below F#, which is the third note of the D major scale.

Quizzes

• Quiz/Major scale
• Quiz/Minor scale

External links

listening

GNU Solfege is a free music education program for learning intervals, chords, and scales by ear, among other things.

Musical Mind has free interval ear training exercises online, as well as other exercises for solfege, dictation and playing by ear.

written

http://musictheory.net/trainers/html/id84_en.html - Interval Trainer for recognizing written triads

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