Intervals: Part One
Otherwise known as the distance between two notes, or at least that’s the type of interval I’ll be referring to. Intervals are something that usually come up when you do ear training, and you might see these in written theory exercises too. So why should we learn these things?
I think one of the most important skills that ear training in general, but intervals especially help us with, is developing this idea of an “inner musical ear.” Looking at notes on a page and being able to “hear” what the notes sound like in your head, is an incredibly useful skill for musicians. Now if this is the first time you are learning about intervals, it might take some time before you get to that point, so how do we start?
Let’s start by identifying written intervals. Of course there is more than one way to do this, and this method applies specifically to the western classical music tradition. If you have two notes and you need to know the interval between them, always start from the bottom note. The bottom note is going to be considered our root note, and is how we will base the quality of the interval. Start from the bottom note, which is 1, and then just count up lines and spaces or letter names until you get to the second note. So if you had a C and an A (C on the bottom) C would be 1, then you count up (D-2, E-3, F-4, G-5) to A and you should get 6. So then the actual distance between these written notes is 6. Okay that was the easy part, we know that to go from a C to an A is some kind of 6th.
The more challenging part is now determining the quality of the interval. The first step was for the distance. The quality meaning, how this 6th sounds, or how it relates to the bottom note. So next we need to find the bottom note’s major key signature to see how the second note fits into the key “established” by the bottom note. So C major doesn’t have a key signature (there are no sharps or flats that adjust any of the tones of the scale), so in the major scale of C, A will occur as an A natural, (it is not altered by a key signature). So with our example, C to A, because A exists as an A natural in the key of C, this is a major 6th. In a sentence, to identify a written interval first discover the lower of the two notes, count the distance from the first to second note, and then examine the quality based on the major key signature of the lower note.
If I were to keep going, this would become a very long post. There is a lot more to intervals than I can fit here, but as you can already see once again the key signature makes an appearance. I tell my students this all the time when we are going through pieces, scales, or theory, key signatures are the solid rock foundation we need to build theory on top of. There are aspects of theory that are not completely reliant on key signatures, like rhythm, but so much of western classical music theory needs a strong understanding of keys and key signatures.
DISCLAIMER
I am not a medical doctor. These posts are all anecdotal, based on experiences through my own learning, understanding and teaching. My musical knowledge is based primarily in the Western classical tradition, which by no means defines the only perspective to learn and understand music.
