Working with Musical Intervals

Lesson 2: Working with Musical Intervals   -   Music, chords, songs, melodies and so on are basically made up of one main component; Intervals. What are intervals? Well, just as an interval of time is the distance between two points in time such as an Hour, a Day, A year, A century and so on, a musical interval is the distance between two pitches. Because there are twelve notes in the musical alphabet, there are twelve intervals you need to know in theory and most likely, it would be a fantastic idea to learn where they are on your instrument as well. Every interval sounds unique with no two alike. C to D is an example of an Interval for instance. Intervals make up the music you hear and play and they can be played together such as in chords or they can be played one note after another in low to high or high to low. The point is, they are simply the distances between pitch and which ones you use will DRASTICALLY effect the way something sounds. There are twelve intervals, because there are twelve possible distances from a single note in the chromatic scale. Intervals are also ABSOLUTE meaning they can be moved around to different notes and still have the same flavor but a slightly different color depending on how low or high they are.

The first, most basic interval is the Octave, which we already learned is two of the same notes but one higher and one lower. The octave is the most consonant interval meaning it sounds the most crisp and pure of all the intervals. If we split the octave into 12 equal steps, then we get the musical alphabet. The distance from one of these steps to an adjacent note is called a Semi-Tone or Half Step. And no, I'm not British, I just think that semitone sounds better as an interval name.  From this point, it's a good idea to look into how the interval naming system works.

Basically, as we said before, the chromatic scale has 7 letters in it with 5 sharps/flat versions, right? Well, think of those seven letters as being the base for the interval numbering system. This means that if we have we play an interval of C and B towards the upper C, then we would have a seventh because B is seven letters away from C. Likewise, if we play C and G together, we're playing a fifth because G is five letters away from C.

C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C
 1              2               3  4              5              6               7    8

C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C
 1              2               3  4              5              6               7    8

Obviously, this won't work in any key except C. But what I'm trying to get you to understand is how this numbering system works. When we get to scales, this will make a whole lot more sense.

Interval Types 

There are five types of intervals_ Major, Minor, Augmented, Diminished and Perfect

Don't let those terms scare you, they aren't as difficult as you think. It's all about understanding what they mean.  Major means larger and Minor means smaller. Basically Minor is a semitone lower than Major which is a semitone higher than Minor. Augmented basically is taking an interval and raising it a semitone higher than  a major interval. (Augment means to make larger so think of it like making the distance a bit wider) Diminished is the opposite; it just means to lower a minor interval by a semitone. Finally Perfect means that the interval has the least amount of unpleasantness to it.

There are only three perfect intervals. Octave, Fifth and Fourth
There are four intervals that have major and minor versions, Second, Thirds, Sixths and Sevenths
Augmented and diminished gets a bit complicated though because of dealing with en harmonic crap.
(It can get annoying just so you know ;) )
There are also Tritones, augmented Sixth and Unison  btw

Obviously, discussing all these intervals in this lesson would get really LONG really FAST and it's pointless so I will tell you that we will be discussing all of these in depth as we progress.  Right now, we're mostly interested in understanding a little of how intervals work and what they are.

Assignment:
             It would be a good idea to learn how to play the semitone on your instrument. Also get yourself comfortable with the five terms I mentioned.

Terms:
          Major - Wider Version
          Minor - Narrower Version
          Augmented - Wider than Major
          Diminished - Narrower than Minor
          Perfect - Sounds pure and crisp

Let's now take at look at fifths!