Category: The Interval-Singing Project

Christmas Carols With Different Starting Intervals

Don’t discard those worn-out Christmas carols! While they’re still fresh, they make a great educational tool for children (and others) to learn intervals. 

By associating a song you already know with an interval, you can immediately sing that interval.

Here’s an incomplete list of Christmas carols whose opening interval starts with various intervals.

Any other suggestions?

Minor 2nd ascending

I’m Dreaming Of A White Christmas

Minor 2nd descending

Joy To The World (the first line is a complete major scale descending)

Major 2nd ascending

Silent Night 

Ding Dong Merrily On High

Major 2nd descending

Deck the halls

Minor 3rd ascending

Jingle Bells (chorus)

Major 3rd ascending

While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night

Perfect 4th ascending

We Wish You A Merry Christmas

Away In A Manger

12 Days of Christmas

Perfect 4th descending

O Come All Ye Faithful

Perfect 5th ascending

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Major 6th ascending

The Holly And The Ivy

Octave ascending

The Christmas Song (chestnuts roasting on an open fire)

You can also learn to sing intervals by singing scales. For more, please visit:

The Interval-Singing Project

The Interval-Singing Project is a database of popular song and theme titles, collected as an aid to teaching intervals.

The songs are well-known within their category and genre and feature a specific musical interval as the first interval in the melody.

Instead of a student having to learn the sound of each interval from scratch, they will be able to tap into their own knowledge by simply remembering the start of a well-known song within their lived experience and musical interests.

I have set up a survey to collect suggestions. Please share the link below with your music teacher or fellow musicians so we can build a rich resource.

The resulting database will be available free of charge to anyone by subscribing to my blog and will be updated regularly. A selection of results will be publicly posted here.

Being able to recognise and name intervals is one of the cornerstones of both music theory and musicianship and I hope that the resulting database will become a handy, free resource for anyone who learns or teaches music.

Erik Kowarski 

Click Here To Go To The Survey

Survey Results (coming soon…)

A selection of results will be publicly posted in this category.

Subscribers will receive a link to the full database, including the ability to sort by interval, title, genre, nationality and more.