Ear Training: Musical Intervals

To be a good musical composer, you must have a good musical ear, or at least a good musical brain. You should be able to hear music in your head as you compose, or during the day whenever you think of music. Beethoven was deaf for most of his musical career. However, even those pieces he composed while he was deaf sounded good because he could hear music in his head, and he had perfect pitch. In fact, I think the fact that he became deaf after learning the basics of music may have freed up a lot of energy for his brain, allowing him to focus even more on hearing music in his head.

Most of us don’t have perfect pitch. There are courses on the internet that can claim to teach it, but I really don’t see the point in even trying to gain perfect pitch, especially if these courses actually cost money. For those of you who don’t know, perfect pitch is the ability to hear a note and to be able to name which note it is without using a reference note. My older brother has perfect pitch, which can sometimes be useful when I want to know the key to a piece I’m listening to. So, if I play, for example, a G note on the piano without him seeing which key I’m pressing, he would be able to tell me that it’s a G. He might even be able to tell me which octave it is, and he could definitely tell me if the note was a bit sharp or flat (in other words, if the piano needed tuning).

Some say that, although perfect pitch in itself is a rarity, perfect pitch combined with musical talent in a person is even rarer. Actually, if you look in the past, composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Chopin and Rimsky-Korsakoff had perfect pitch, but those are just five I can name offhand, and there have been other composers tho didn’t have perfect pitch and still composed some beautiful music.

In other words, if you have perfect pitch, that may help you in your compositions, but really, perfect pitch is only the ability to understand a very technical part of music. Know that music is more than just a technical thing, and so as helpful as perfect pitch may be, even if you compose a really bad piece in a really good key, it will still be really bad piece.

If you don’t have perfect pitch, don’t worry about trying to develop it. Focus more of your energy on developing relative pitch. This is the ability to be able to tell what a note is relative to a reference note. In order to develop relative pitch, you must know about intervals between notes.

Because there are only 12 basic notes on most musical scales, there are 12 possible intervals with any one note as the base. In these 12 intervals, I’m counting the perfect octave, which is like a C followed by a C an octave higher or an octave lower.

Note: I will mention “whole steps” and “half steps” between the two notes in each interval. A whole step is equal to a Major Second interval, a half step is equal to a Minor Second interval. You kind of just have to know what those two are, but they weren’t very hard for me to memorize in my old music class.

I’ve drawn a keyboard to illustrate a piano key for you so that you can see visually what the intervals would look like. Just count the number of steps it takes to get from one key to the next, using both white and black notes:



Click on the names of the intervals to hear them on your computer.

Minor Second: This is one half step between any two notes (for example, C to C#/Db). I remember this as sounding like the two notes in the beginning of the Jaws theme.

Major Second: This is one whole step between any two noted (for example, C to D). I remember this interval as being the first two notes in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Minor Third: This is one whole and one half step, or just three half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to D#/Eb). I remember this as the first two notes in the main part of “O, Canada”. If you don’t know what “O, Canada” sounds like, get out there and learn more about the culture of other countries. If you live in Canada and don’t know what “O, Canada” sounds like, may I ask why?

Major Third: This is two whole steps or four half steps between any two notes (for example, C to E). I remember this interval as being the first two notes in “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”.

Perfect Fourth: This is two whole steps and a half step, or five half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to F). I remember this interval as being made up of the first two notes in the famous wedding march, to which one great poet wrote the lyrics “Here comes the bride/All dressed in white/Slipped on a banana peel/And went for a ride”. Ah, now that’s good songwriting.

Augmented Fourth/Diminished Fifth: This is three whole steps, or six half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to F#/Gb).

Perfect Fifth: This is three whole steps and one half step, or seven half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to G). This should sound like the first notes to the opening theme to Star Wars.

Minor Sixth: This is four whole steps, or eight half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to G#/Ab).

Major Sixth: This is four whole steps and a half step, or nine half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to A). This interval sounds like the first two notes in “My Body Lies over the Ocean”.

Minor Seventh: This is five whole steps, or ten half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to A#/Bb).

Major Seventh: This is five whole steps and one half step, or eleven half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to B).

Perfect Octave: This is six whole steps or twelve half steps between any two notes, or just a note followed by the same note an octave higher (for example, middle C to the next C). This interval sounds like the first two notes to the main part of “Somewhere over the Rainbow”.

You can associate each interval with whichever song you want, but the fact that I could only think of songs to associate with certain intervals shows that you might not need to memorize all of these intervals.

Each interval can also be inverted. Going from a C to the G above it is a Perfect Fifth interval, for example, but going from a G to the C above is makes a Perfect Fourth interval. The following lists goes from Original -> Inversion -> Original.

Minor Second -> Major Seventh -> Minor Second
Major Second -> Minor Seventh -> Major Second
Minor Third -> Major Sixth -> Minor Third
Major Third -> Minor Sixth -> Major Third
Perfect Fourth -> Perfect Fifth -> Perfect Fourth
Augmented Fourth/Diminished Fifth -> Augmented Fourth/Diminished Fifth -> Augmented Fourth/Diminished Fifth (This is basically the middle)
Perfect Fifth -> Perfect Fourth -> Perfect Fifth
Minor Sixth -> Major Third -> Minor Sixth
Major Sixth -> Minor Third -> Major Sixth
Minor Seventh -> Major Second -> Minor Seventh
Major Seventh -> Minor Second -> Major Seventh

Because the perfect octave is simply the same note at different pitches, it can’t really be inverted.

Once you know these intervals, whenever you listen to music in daily life, even if you only listen to the music on TV commercials, try to notice intervals in the tune and name those intervals in your head. Once you’ve somewhat memorized the intervals in a song, you will be able to play the tune on whichever instrument you play with less use of trial and error. Also, knowing intervals like this will allow you to write down music more quickly after you’ve heard it in your head.