Lund Music Studio

In music, an “interval” is the space between any two pitches. Students of music theory typically spend a lot of time in the beginning of their studies learning how to identify a given interval, both from written notes and sounded pitches.

If you can add and subtract and you spend some time practicing, identifying intervals that are written on the staff is an easy task.  Hearing two notes and determining whether they are an augmented fourth or a minor ninth apart is usually tricker, and can be daunting for some students.

To add insult to injury, I haven’t seen a lot in various textbooks that helps a student learn these intervals — since the book usually doesn’t generate its own sound, it will just show you a couple notes on the staff and say, “That is a major third. Learn it. Memorize it.” Okay, great! But how can you figure out what it sounds like?

Aside from the obligatory “practice, practice, practice”, here are some ideas to help you learn intervals. (Some of these ideas have been borrowed from Hearing and Writing Music by Ron Gorow).

Play it. Assuming you’ve figured out the easy part and you know what the interval looks like on paper, get yourself a well-tuned instrument and play the interval in different contexts — by itself, with other intervals, or in musical pieces.

Name that song! This is a common practice, and in fact was used in my first theory course in college. For example, the tritone is the first interval in the melody of both “Maria” from West Side Story and the theme song to The Simpsons. So, if you hear an interval that sounds like either of those songs is about to start, it’s a tritone. This is very helpful for many students, but has its own problems — chief among them being that if you don’t know the song real well, you can trick yourself with this method.

Size does matter. Intervals are distances. So, each different interval has a corresponding different size. Most people (even completely non-musical ones) could tell you that high C is higher than middle C. They could probably go on to tell you that the C above that is even higher than middle C. Easy example, but that’s what you’re doing when identifying intervals. Spend time listening to different intervals and try to hear the difference in size.

What comes next? Tons of Western music is based on formulaic chord progressions and harmonies. Play two notes. Do you feel like you have completed a musical idea? Or do you need to “resolve” it somehow? If so, how should you resolve it? Intervals like the minor second and perfect fourth can feel like they have arrived on a final note, but other intervals like the major second and tritone will feel to most of us like we need to add another note to the end to “finish” the phrase. Familiarize yourself with this tonal nature of different intervals.

Happy or sad? Most students, especially younger ones, are taught that major scales sound “happy” and minor scales sound “sad”. This is a simple way to say the scale has less or more dissonance. Listen to an interval, and consider how the resonance sounds to you. Some intervals like the tritone will sound very dissonant, or clashing, while others such as the major third will sound bright and pleasing.

Drill wisely. Most attempts to master hearing intervals will require a lot of “drill” exercises — hearing intervals over and over again, and trying to identify them. Start doing this, if you haven’t already. But remember to pay attention to what you are doing. If you get to the point where you are frustrated or just guessing randomly, you’re no longer achieving anything. Give yourself a break, and before you come back to the exercises, refer to a book, article, teacher, or friend to get some new ideas to help you.

There is an excellent online ear trainer at http://www.ossmann.com/bigears/

Happy training!