The Harmonious Blacksmith: A Music Theory Exploration

Ep. 9: Ear Training_Part_1: Intervals

• Kevin Patrick Fleming • Season 1 • Episode 9

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In Ear Training_Part_1: Intervals, we dive deep into the foundational concepts of ear training and intervals, tailored specifically for beginner music theorists and aspiring musicians. Whether you're a guitar player looking to improve your aural skills, a music student starting your journey in music theory, or simply seeking to sharpen your understanding of musical intervals, this episode is for you.

Learn how to identify and internalize different types of intervals – from simple major and minor intervals to more complex augmented and diminished ones. Developing your ear for intervals is a crucial skill for musicians of all levels, helping you with everything from sight-singing to transcribing music by ear.

We'll also cover practical tips on how to practice interval recognition and suggest easy exercises to integrate into your daily routine. Perfect for music theory for beginners, this episode will guide you step-by-step through the process of interval ear training, providing you with the tools to enhance your musicality.

If you're serious about improving your aural skills, this episode is your starting point. Tune in, and start building your foundational music theory knowledge with us today!

Keywords: Ear Training, Intervals, Music Theory For Beginners, Aural Skills, Music Theory For Guitar, Musical Intervals, Ear Training Exercises, Interval Recognition, Beginner Music Theory

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UNKNOWN:

So,

SPEAKER_00:

Hello out there to all my fellow music theory nerds that are tuning in today. Welcome back to The Harmonious Blacksmith. I do appreciate everybody tuning in and I do hope you are enjoying my series thus far. This is episode nine. I have a very exciting and special episode today. I am your host, Kevin Patrick Fleming. Ho, ho, ho. Ho, ho. Yeah, baby. Yeah, baby. Let's go. Let's go. So here we are entering episode nine. Having learned a whole lot in the previous eight episodes from starting with one note, how that note changed together to create scales and scale patterns, how scales work, turn into triads using the skipping method, how triads turn into chords, and how chords turn into chord progressions. We have studied all of that stuff very thoroughly so far. A little bit of a paradigm shift in today's episode as we are going to move into the realm of what we call ear training or aural skills. Today's episode is going to be all about that. intervals. So allow me to get on my soapbox here for a moment before I start diving into today's concepts. What is the number one asset you have as a musician? Is it knowledge? Is it your technical abilities? No, it's your ear, right? It's always going to be your ear. Music is a form of communication. It is its own language on top of being the greatest art form in the world that man has ever invented. And in order to speak this language fluently as we all want to, you need to be able to hear it with your ear and be able to recognize sounds, colors, organization of sounds, context of sounds, going from this to this, all of that. You need to be able to use your ear as your number one asset to understand what you're listening to. So let's start off with our first definition today, which is... What is ear training exactly? Ear training is the study and practice in which musicians learn various skills to detect and identify pitches, intervals, melodies, harmonies, and chord progressions solely by ear. Think back to our talks about the difference between the sounds of major and minor on sort of a general broad level. That really was our introduction to ear training and aural skills as we were really associating those sounds in our minds so that we could recognize them more and more in the future. And that really is the core of ear training. So let's go ahead and get to today's concept, which is what is an interval? An interval in music is the distance between two pitches and the unique sound that it produces. Intervals can be evaluated horizontally in a melodic fashion and also vertically in a harmonic fashion. So in other words, in a melody, you could be going from pitch A to pitch B, and there's a certain sound that yields between them, and that's an interval sound. Or you could have a chord that has certain sounds stacked on top of each other simultaneously, and that is also an interval sound. But for the purposes of this episode being the first interval episode, and I'm sure I'll have another, we are going to start where music theory students always need to start with this concept, which is learning horizontal intervals, meaning melodic. So we're going to base all our sounds And here's the good news for those of y'all who have been following this podcast. You have actually already learned like four of the 12 intervals we're going to learn today. Yeah, that's right. You've already learned them. You just need to know how to name them and recognize them now. So without further ado, let's start big picture. And I'm going to start off with a list of the 12 intervals. The 12 intervals are called as follows. A minor second, a major second, a minor third, a major third, a perfect fourth, then a tritone, which is sometimes also called a sharp four or a flat five, depending on context. There's a perfect fifth, a minor sixth and a major sixth, a minor seventh and a major seventh, and then a perfect octave. And no need to be intimidated by this list. We are going to go through them one at a time and learn them well. So remember when I talked about you already know four of them? You really know the first four, which is kind of awesome. And one final precursor, there are ascending intervals and descending intervals. So intervals that go from one pitch and go up in sound and intervals that go from one pitch and go down in sound. Honestly, the best place to start is ascending intervals. So this podcast episode is going to start with ascending intervals only. So intervals start with the two things that we started our music theory study with, which is half steps and whole steps. Now we use these as individual units in context of scale patterns and things like that, like we did previously. But when it comes to intervals, a half step is the equivalent of a minor second. And we're starting there because it is the smallest distance you can move from one pitch to the other without distortion or bending, in the Western system specifically. A minor second sounds like this. A bit lower would sound like this. Higher would sound like this. Or this. So we are literally moving from one pitch up to the very next pitch on any instrument. In this case, that's one fret on a guitar, but it would also just be one key on a piano, for example. So now here comes the fun part. Your job as a music theory practitioner at this point is now to learn how to associate a clear and definitive sound that you've heard and recognized before and attach it to this interval so that when you hear this interval in its various forms in music, you will recognize it as a minor second that it is. Sure. So, for example, any time I hear a really low rumbling minor second, it sounds like this to me. Sounds exactly like the beginning of the theme to the epic horror movie of the past called Jaws. Now, a lot of you young people probably don't know what that is and you might have to look it up and that's fine. But that's what it reminds me of. That doesn't necessarily mean it's what it reminds you of. So your job is to take this sound and figure out how to associate it in your mind with something that is stuck in your mind. Get it? My suggestion is start a list right now, whether it's on your computer, whether it's on a piece of paper, on your phone, whatever it may be. Start writing down each interval. And every time you come up with a sound that it reminds you of, notate it somewhere and stash it away. So for me, on my list, we're going to start with minor second equals Jaws theme. So let's go ahead and move on to the next interval, which is called a major second. Or as we previously learned, a whole step, right? And a major second sounds like this. A little higher. Super low. Now, most of us are most highly affected by music that really pulled on us emotionally during our formative years, i.e. the high school years and the college years, for example. And I'm no different. My most formative years was during the decade of the 90s, and because of that, the major second sound you just heard reminds me of the intro guitar riff to Vaseline by Stone Temple Pilots, because Stone Temple Pilots was the very first rock band I ever saw live as a teenager. But to give you another example, my undergraduate chorus teacher used to refer to a song called People by Bette Midler, and that always reminded her of A Major Second, and I didn't even know that song at the time. I had to go look it up. And you might have to look up both of the examples I just gave you, but the most important thing is that you come up with your own example that makes sense to you. I'm going to keep reiterating that. So on your list that you're making, you should have Minor Second, and you're going to have an example there eventually, if not already, and then you're going to have A And you're going to come up with an example there. So a minor second was a half step of distance. A major second is a whole step of distance or two half steps. And now we're going to get to a third interval, which is a minor third, which is three half steps of distance. And an ascending minor third sounds like this. Higher. Lower. To associate this one in my mind, it always reminds me of the famous Brahms lullaby, which sounds like this. So Now, chances are a lot of you have already been singing that to your kids as they grow up, and you already know that tune pretty well as sort of just a child tune. So my point is, feel free to use it on your list as a placeholder for now. But again, come up with one of your own at least. So no matter what you take from me and my experience and how I hear intervals, you should always at least come up with one more for your own sake. And we move right along to our next interval, which is a major third. And a major third is four half steps of distance between pitch A and pitch B. And it sounds like this. Pitch A. And a major third always reminds me of a very famous catchy and fun song, which is called Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes. If you don't know that song, look it up and listen to the first two notes of the main riff on guitar. It's very catchy, very poppy, and was a huge hit back in the day. Sounds like this. So again, you can use that one, but remember, your job is also to find one on your own and put it on your list so that you have your own private personal list of interval sounds. And let me pause our interval study here for a moment to say something very important. So the two intervals we just learned, a minor third and a major third, are extremely important in our music system because those are the intervals that we use to stack on top of each other to create chords. all our triads and our chords. So our entire system is based off of minor thirds and major thirds. The nerd term that shrouds that entire concept is called tertian harmony. Tertian meaning thirds. So I hope you come up with strong examples for those two because it's going to be very important going forward. But let's go ahead and continue. We left off on a major third, which was four half steps. So we progress to five half steps of distance between point A and point B, which is called a perfect fourth. A perfect fourth sounds like this. A perfect fourth. This one's easy for me. It is most associated in my mind with Here Comes the Bride. And as a classically trained guitarist, as I have been my whole life, I've played tons and tons of weddings. So this tune has always been in my ear. Recognize it? Again, you can write it down as a placeholder on your list, but you do need to come up with at least one more of your own so you can personalize your interval list. Let me take a second to talk about interval names. So, so far we've had minors and majors. And in our mind, we know minor is kind of a lower, darker, sadder kind of sound. And major is more uplifting, brighter, and happier. But now we're getting to one of three intervals that are called perfect intervals. And the reason they're called perfect is because they're not associated with major or minor. They're actually intervals that exist in both major and minor scales. Therefore, they're called perfect. The next interval actually has several different names and can be called an augmented fourth or a diminished fifth and sometimes called a tritone. Now, tritone is not actually an interval name. It comes from tri, meaning three, of course, tone representing like whole tone or whole step. If you remember, semitone equals half step and whole tone equals whole step. So three whole tones is the distance or three whole steps that gives you what they call a tritone. But the interval itself is actually either an augmented fourth, or a diminished fifth, depending on context. And it sounds like this. And this one reminds me of the beginning of The Simpsons theme song, which sounds like this. And on kind of a funny side note, when the whole world was coming out of the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, where you had all these horrible things, including the bubonic plague, wiping out almost the whole earth and things like that, the recovery started going back into the Renaissance period. This interval, the tritone, was banned by the Catholic Church, by composers that were writing Catholic liturgy and sacred music, because it was associated as sounding like it belonged with the devil or it had some kind of satanic connotation. So continuing on down the line right now, our very next interval, which is going to be seven half steps between pitches, is going to be called a perfect fifth. And a perfect fifth sounds like this. A perfect fifth always reminds me of a couple of 80s epic movie theme tunes. The first of which is Top Gun. Top Gun. And then the other one is the theme to E.T., Extraterrestrial.

UNKNOWN:

Extraterrestrial.

SPEAKER_00:

And our next interval, which is eight half steps of distance in between the pitches, is called a minor sixth. And a minor sixth sounds like this. A minor sixth definitely has a personal place in my mind with a quirky reference in my mind from a song called You Enjoy Myself by Phish, which has an epic part in the middle where they reiterate this minor sixth over and over again. And it just rings in my mind and always reminds me of this interval. It sounds like this. And it's just the first part of that that is a minor sixth, but man, does it ring in my ear just because I am a bit of a fish head and followed them around when I was younger. And man, that stuff is just burned in my brain. And now we move to the next interval, which contains nine half steps from pitch to pitch, which is called a major sixth.

UNKNOWN:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

And I'm going to go with, on my list, the Princess Leia theme from Star Wars, which starts with a major 6th. And major sixth is kind of a tough one to find, actually. So I urge you to take your time this week to go find one that really matches up with what you listen to and what you remember. But moving on, we're going to go to 10 half steps of distance now, which is an interval called a minor seventh. And a minor seventh sounds like this. This interval reminds me of a couple different things. If you're old school like me, it reminds you of an old Ford commercial that sounds like this. But another cool and epic one, since I'm a sci-fi nerd as well as a music theory nerd, is the Star Trek theme that goes like this. And now with two intervals to go, we go to 11 half steps of distance between notes, which is an interval called a major seventh. And a major seventh sounds like this. Ah. An example of a major seventh is another old school 80s tune called Take On Me by A-Ha. And we've made it to our final interval, which is going to be a full 12 half steps from one pitch to another. And they share the same letter because it's called an octave. And an octave sounds like this. Okay. And a famous tune that I connect an octave to in my mind is Somewhere Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_00:

And there you have it. We have officially gone through all 12 ascending intervals in music. So how does that feel if you've never done that before? So let me wrap up this ascending interval study by tying these intervals into the scale patterns that you already know, specifically major scale and minor scale, or intervals. as in Greek mode form, Ionian and Aeolian. Remember, everything goes back to scales, and it always will. So if I start with a C major scale that sounds like this. So let me point out, when you start on a C and you go to the second note of a C major scale, it's a major second. Then when you go to the third note, you get a major third. And then when you go to the fourth note, you get a perfect fourth. And then perfect fifth. And then major sixth, because it's a major scale. Major seventh, because it's a major scale. And finally, you get an octave.

UNKNOWN:

And finally, you get an octave.

SPEAKER_00:

But if I were to do that same experiment for the parallel minor, so I'm going to start on C again, but I'm going to build that natural minor scale or Aeolian mode, you would get, you'd start on C, you get a major second again. That's going to be a little bit of a head scratcher because you're going to ask me, why is it not a minor second? I'll get to that in a moment. But your third is a minor third. Then you get a perfect fourth, which remember, perfect means both scales. Then you get a perfect fifth. Then you get a minor sixth. Then you get a minor seventh. And then finally you get an octave again. So quick explanation, Aeolian starts with a major second interval, but there are a couple of minor sounding modes, which are Phrygian and Locrian, that start with a minor second. So Phrygian would sound like this. So you can clearly hear the minor second in the beginning. And then the other mode that does that is called Locrian, which is based on the seventh scale degree. And that one's going to sound like this. So again, you can clearly hear the half step in the beginning, which again is a minor second. And can y'all recall from previous episodes what the three scale degrees are that are different between major and minor? They are three, six, and seven. So when you're in a major scale or Ionian, you're going to have a major third, a major sixth, and a major seven. Makes sense, right? When you're in a minor mode like Aeolian, you're going to have a minor third, a minor sixth, and a minor seventh. And now that you've learned the basic setup for ascending intervals, I will absolutely be looking forward to expanding on this going forward using more and more audio examples just to bring it all home. Because remember, your ear is your number one asset as a musician. But now it's time for Breakdown.

UNKNOWN:

Breakdown.

SPEAKER_00:

Today we learned all about ascending intervals. We started by learning what ear training was and why it's important. We learned that we have 12 intervals. We learned that we have major and minor intervals that are called that for a reason as well as perfect intervals. We learned what tertian harmony means, harmony in thirds, what our system is based off of. We learned the difference between ascending and descending intervals, as well as the difference between listening to horizontal intervals as opposed to vertical, the difference being melodic and harmonic intervals. Thanks again for tuning in, everybody. I hope that you learned a lot. I hope that you're creating your interval list and you update it as you go to use those sounds in your mind to relate to everything else. Until next time, I will look forward to... Continuing this music theory exploration with all of you.