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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.
This post is one of a 2-part series of free basic music theory lessons on my blog, musictheoryde-mystified.com. You can see the complete list here. Please feel welcome to make a comment or ask a question.
The minor intervals are minor 2nd, minor 3rd, minor 6th and minor 7th. There are a few ways we can learn to sing these intervals.
Phrygian mode
The minor intervals are based on the phrygian mode. The phrygian mode is not easy to sing!
Most people aren’t used to starting a scale with a minor 2nd (1 semitone). However, if you listen to early music or traditional folk genres, you may be able to sing it.
Give it a try if you like. Don’t worry if you find it hard because there are easier options below.
If you can sing this scale, you can teach yourself the minor intervals by counting scale notes in the phrygian mode, just as we did for major intervals in the previous lesson. If not, read on…
Natural Minor
The next option is to sing the natural minor scale. That works for all except the minor 2nd, 1 semitone. See below for how to learn to sing a minor 2nd.
Most people find this much easier to sing than the phrygian mode. Again, the best way to find out is to try it.
Try It…
If you can comfortably sing the natural minor scale without following the video, you can use it to find the minor 3rd, minor 6th and minor 7th. Learn to sing the minor 2nd separately (see later in this post).
Example: minor 7th by singing the minor scale
Major Scale
The final method, outlined below, is to start to sing a major scale. To sing a minor 2nd, 3rd, 6th or 7th, drop down by 1 semitone from the major to find the equivalent minor interval, much like the interval ruler in 16. Interval names 1: major, minor and perfect intervals.
This method is great when you want to name an interval that you hear, because at first you won’t know whether it’s major or minor.
Rather than having to try both major and minor scales, just sing the major scale. If the major scale overshoots the upper note of the interval it’s probably a minor interval. (There is one exception to this but we’ll leave that until Part 2 of this course).
This requires one trick; the ability to sing 1 semitone below a note. This may seem hard, but I’m sure you can already do it without even realising it…
How To Sing 1 Semitone Up Or Down
Try This…
Sing the first 4 (or the last 4) notes of a major scale.
Now go back and forth between the last two notes you sang – that’s 1 semitone.
Feel how close together these last two notes are, almost squeezed together… Remember that feeling when you want to sing two notes 1 semitone apart.
Does it remind you of something? Start slowly and speed it up… The theme of the all-time classic movie, Jaws…
Now you’ve sung 1 semitone up and down a few times, reverse it. Sing down before going up (start on the higher note if you like). Below we have 1 semitone as a minor 2nd on C, first upwards, then downwards. Focus on keeping the two notes squeezed tightly together.
After a little while, you‘ll be able to sing a semitone up or down down by itself.
How To Sing Minor Intervals By Singing The Major Scale
For a minor 2nd, learn to sing 1 semitone up as outlined above.
For other intervals, sing the major scale indicated by the degree of the interval name (3rd, 6th or 7th).
Sing down 1 semitone.
Repeat this a few times.
Now just sing the first and last note as an interval.
Repeat a few times. Build up to being able to sing it by yourself, without the video.
Once you’ve sung a few intervals, try to sing the in-between scale notes more quickly and quietly, until they’re just a thought.
Try These…
Minor 2nd by singing the major scale
Sing the first bar again while you listen to the 2nd bar.
This is just a semitone up rather than down, as we learnt earlier.
Minor 3rd by singing the major scale
NOTE: For this and the following intervals, repeat the 3rd bar while listening to the 4th bar.
Minor 6th by singing the major scale
Minor 7th by singing the major scale
How To Name An Interval That You Hear
Identify the lower and higher note of the interval and sing them.
While listening to the interval, start to sing the major scale of the lower note, counting degrees (note numbers).
If it’s a major or perfect interval, you’ll find the upper note and have the answer.
If it’s a minor interval, at some point you’ll be too high. As soon as you notice this, sing 1 semitone below your last note. If you’re still too high, you went too far up the major scale and you should start again.
You may need to repeat this a few times until you feel sure that your upper note matches the upper note of the interval.
Try These…
Name the following intervals:
Answers at the end of this post.
NOTE: There is one interval we haven’t covered in the last two lessons, an interval of 6 semitones, often called a tritone (we’ll learn its proper interval name in Part 2 of this course). It’s a bit harder to sing than the other intervals and isn’t all that common so we’ll leave that one out for now.
Coming Soon! The Interval-Singing Project
The interval-singing project is survey of well-known songs in many genres, each of which starts with a specific interval. For each genre I hope to collect song titles to cover each interval.
Instead of having to learn intervals from scratch, students will be able to draw on their own knowledge, needing only to remember which song represents which interval.
Anyone who subscribes to my blog will have access to the database at no cost.
If you found this post helpful, please feel welcome to like, share or leave a comment. If you have any questions, leave them as a comment and I’ll respond as soon as I can. To stay up to date wth new posts, please subscribe.
This post is one of a 2-part series of free basic music theory lessons on my blog, musictheoryde-mystified.com. You can see the complete list here. Please feel welcome to make a comment or ask a question.
Learning To Sing Intervals
Interval names are based on scale notes.
If we can sing, hum or imagine the sound of a scale, we can teach ourselves the character and name of various intervals by ear. We can count how many scale notes there are from the lower note of the interval to the higher note.
The easiest scale to sing, at least in Western culture, is the major scale. If you can’t sing a major scale straight away, please have a look at 17. Listen And Sing: How To Sing The Major Scale before reading on.
Major scale intervals
In 16. Intervals 1: Major, Minor And Perfect Intervals we saw that intervals are always counted from the lower note to the higher note, regardless of the order in which they’re played. The lower note of the interval becomes the root note of a major scale. We count scale notes to find the higher note and name the interval.
Counting up from the root note, the major scale contains the major 2nd, major 3rd, perfect 4th, perfect 5th, major 6th, major 7th, and, of course, the octave.
Treat the root note of the scale as the lower note of an interval.
Now sing from the root note to the 2nd note. This is a major 2nd.
To sing a major 3rd, sing the first 3 scale notes in a row but sing the 2nd note quieter or shorter than the first and third notes (see below). After a few times, leave the second note out altogether.
Repeat this exercise from the root note to each of the other notes in the scale.
Tip: the most useful intervals to become really good at are the major 3rd, perfect 5th and the octave. They are the notes of a major triad, a sound which will feel familiar to the ear and provide a shortcut for larger intervals (more on triads in Part 2 of my course).
Try These…
Below are the intervals of C major. Most voices can find a comfortable way to sing a C in the lower part of their range. The note number/scale degree is indicated below the notes.
In the first line, sing along to the first bar, then sing the same notes again in the second bar while you hear the interval played together. Feel your voice hit the lower and higher notes of the interval at the start and end of the bar.
In the second line the in-between scale notes are left out. Again, keep singing the first bar while you hear the interval played together in the second bar.
Practice each interval long enough until you don’t need to listen to the example while you sing.
Major 2nd
Major 3rd
Perfect 4th
Perfect 5th
Major 6th
Major 7th
Octave (perfect 8th)
Once you build a little confidence, choose a slightly lower or higher note for your intervals.
The more you do exercises like these, the easier it will be to recognise the interval between two notes, whether you hear them as a melodic interval (consecutive notes) or as a harmonic interval (both notes sounding together).
How To Sing An Interval Above A Note
This is just like how we learnt the intervals starting on C
Choose a major or perfect interval by name, such as a perfect 4th.
Play a note towards the bottom of your range.
Sing that note, then sing a note that’s the chosen interval above it
If you need to, you can quietly sing the in-between scale notes like in the first exercise.
How To Name An Interval You’re Hearing
You can use the same method to name an interval that you hear.
First, identify both notes of the interval by singing them. They are a little harder to pick when played together.
Sing the lower note, then sing the notes of the major scale until you hear your note match the higher note, counting notes as you sing (the starting note counts as the first note).
2 notes is a 2nd, 3 notes is a 3rd, etc. The 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th are major intervals, the 4th and 5th are perfect. (Technically the octave is also perfect, we just don’t need to say so. An octave is just called an octave.)
Try These…
Below are audio files of a few harmonic intervals. Remember to sing both notes of each interval before singing (or thinking) scale notes. To make it a little easier, the two notes are quickly played as a melodic interval before hearing the two notes together.
Name each interval using the steps outlined above:
Answers at the bottom of this post.
If you found this post helpful, please feel welcome to like, share or leave a comment. If you have any questions, leave them as a comment and I’ll respond as soon as I can. To stay up to date wth new posts, please subscribe.
This post is one of a 2-part series of free basic music theory lessons on my blog, musictheoryde-mystified.com. You can see the complete list here. Please feel welcome to make a comment or ask a question.
This post is one of a 2-part series of free basic music theory lessons on my blog, musictheoryde-mystified.com. You can see the complete list here. Please feel welcome to make a comment or ask a question.
…If you can already sing a major scale you can skip this lesson…
If you’re panicking at the thought of doing this lesson, relax… When I say “sing”, I don’t mean “sound like a real singer”! Don’t worry about tone, voice quality, breathing etc. You don’t even have to hold a note for very long. All we’re trying to do is pitch a few moderate-length notes in a comfortable part of the voice range.
The ability to sing a scale is one of the fundamental skills of musicianship. It helps develop our sense of tonality, which in turn helps us to understand and remember melodies and riffs. We also use scales to recognise, count and name intervals.
The easiest scale to sing, at least in Western culture, is the major scale. You may even know the major scale already, in solfege, as a simple melody: do, re, mi etc.
If you’re not used to singing, start on a fairly low note, so you can sing upwards from there. The exercise below starts on C, which most people can sing as a low-ish note.
A note about voices and octaves
The range of female voices and children’s voices can be represented on the treble clef. Middle C or C4 is a comfortably low note. The octave from C4 to C5 is typically a comfortable range to sing in, even for untrained voices.
In general terms, a male voice typically sounds an octave lower than a female voice. The male voice’s actual pitch range fits on the tenor (guitar) clef.
Many songbooks don’t distinguish between male and female voices. Melodies are written in the treble clef by default. When a male voice reads middle C and sings a comfortably low note, we hear C3, not C4.
This is such a natural phenomenon that we interpret this difference more as tone than as pitch. We expect male voices to sound lower than female voices.
We all “reach up” to sing a high note and “reach down” to sing a low note. These ranges within the voice range are called registers. High notes are in a high register, low notes in a low register. As humans, we can hear the effort of reaching for high or low notes as a change in register.
When female and male voices sing together, we listen more for which register they sing in (reaching up or reaching down) rather than which actual octave.
The examples and exercises in this post are in the treble clef, at the actual pitch of a typical female or children’s voice. Male voices should have no trouble singing along an octave lower as long as middle C is thought of as a low-ish note.
What Words Shall I Sing?
For beginners, start with a consonant such as “L”, “T” or “D” followed by an open mouth vowel sound such as “aah”, “oh”or “ooh”. These are the easiest sounds to control and produce a clear and stable pitch.
Examples: La la la la, Da da da da, Ta ta ta ta , Doo doo doo doo etc.
If you’re confident that you can hold a note on different syllables, you could sing the note numbers as you go, “one, two, three, four “ etc.
How To Sing A Major Scale
The following video is the scale of C major at a slow tempo, one note per bar.
In each bar, you hear the scale note first.
During the rest that follows, answer by singing the same note (indicated on the stave by a slash).
Each bar is repeated so you can check that you’re singing the right note.
Here’s the same exercise without the repeats.
Now repeat the exercise at a faster tempo.
Feel how far you need to move from one note to the next; close for 1 semitone, a little more for 2 semitones. Remember the pattern of 2- and 1-semitone intervals that make up the major scale.
As you get used to the notes, you can sing along with the video as well as singing the answers.
Here’s the whole scale without rests.
Listen to the scale of C major, then sing along with it. Repeat several times.
When it feels comfortable, listen again, then sing the scale by yourself.
You can monitor your progress by singing along to the video again.
Once you can sing it by yourself, try speeding up the tempo or singing in quavers rather than crotchets.
Here it is at a faster tempo…
Other modes
As a follow-up, you can teach yourself to sing the scale of any other modes that are used in genres that interest you, be it the natural minor, melodic and harmonic minor (coming in Part 2 of this course), other traditional modes, the blues scale etc. Look at the pattern of intervals that make up the mode as you play and sing along.
If you found this post helpful, please feel welcome to like, share or leave a comment. If you have any questions, leave them as a comment and I’ll respond as soon as I can. To stay up to date wth new posts, please subscribe.
This post is one of a 2-part series of free basic music theory lessons on my blog, musictheoryde-mystified.com. You can see the complete list here. Please feel welcome to make a comment or ask a question.
Beats and note length
Music is made up of notes and rests of varying length. The musical unit of note length is the beat.
Beats
The duration of a note or rest isn’t written in absolute time: we don’t say a note is 3 seconds or half a second long. Instead, we say it is 3 beats long or half a beat long. We use symbols to indicate the length of a note as a number of beats or a fraction of a beat. For more on the symbols for note length, please see 5. How Long Is A Note? Note Values 1
Tempo
How long a beat lasts depends on the tempo. Think of a clock that doesn’t just tick every second, but that has a dial that lets you set the tick to any speed you like (this actually exists, both as a mechanical ticker and as an app: it’s called a metronome). The speed of the ticking is the tempo. Tempo is measured in beats per minute or bpm.
Each tick represents the start of one beat, so a note that is one beat long and starts on a tick will last until the next tick.
Timing
Notes can start on a beat or between beats. The relationship between the actual notes of a part and the tempo is called timing. Being able to accurately play the note lengths in relation to the tempo is called playing in time.
Timing is also the basis of how musicians can play together in a co-ordinated way. Large ensembles often use a conductor for this purpose. The conductor acts as a human metronome, using gestures to indicate the beats and thus control the tempo.
The tempo of a song is often constant, especially in many modern genres, but it is also possible for the tempo to change within a piece.
Counting the beat
The standard metronome has a range of 40-208 bpm, which roughly parallels the range of human heart rates. This represents our range of experience of what feels like a beat. For example, try counting “1, 2, 3, 4” or “1, 2, 3” along to metronome ticks of various tempi.
Slower than about 40 bpm we can’t “join the dots”; we don’t feel the link from one beat to the next clearly enough to be able to count steadily and we’re tempted to insert the word “and” between counts: of course, this effectively doubles our counting speed, even though we’re using a different word.
Faster than about 200 bpm it becomes hard to feel each count as a proper beat: more like a half-beat: and we want to count every 2nd beat instead.
Some music isn’t played in any set tempo, but a kind of flexi-time. This is formally called rubato but the English word freely can be used instead if you prefer. Rubato is prominent in operatic arias and other “story-telling” genres such as ballads.
Musicianship: the bridge between theory and practice
Often music is thought of as two subjects, theory and practical: the reading and understanding of musical language and learning to play an instrument. There is an important third element called musicianship. Think of musicianship as practical theory, general musical skills independent of the instrument you play.
One aspect of musicianship is timing. Aspiring musicians need to master some basic skills such as being able to play to an external beat, be it from a metronome or other players. Some people have a natural ability to feel the beat, while others need some exercises to develop this ability.
Basic timing practice
The following examples use two note symbols. The first is called a crotchet or quarter note: here it represents a length of 1 beat. The second is called a quaver or eighth note and represents half a beat. More on note length in a later post.
I have already mentioned the first step, the ability to count or play a note steadily to a beat at various tempi. Try counting “1, 2” first, then playing. You can play any note: often it’s easier to play two different notes, depending on your instrument.
If you had trouble counting to the beat as above, practice at a medium tempo such as 90bpm first as it’s neither too slow to feel nor too fast to play.
TIP: Listen to the metronome first before starting to count or play. Let yourself feel the tempo for as long as you like: it’ll be much easier to play in time.
A variation of the above exercise is to tap your foot at a set tempo and play together with your taps.
The next step is to be able to divide a beat into halves. It may help to use the word “and”, at least mentally, to mark the half beats. This makes it feel like you’re counting twice as often, which is certainly easier for slower tempi. The trick is to make sure the halves occur exactly halfway between the beats: at first, they may be uneven. Try playing along to the example below.
Gradually increase the tempo until you can play quite fast.
Once you can play steadily every half beat at a faster tempo such as 120bpm as above, try leaving out the “and”s in your count.
It may take a little while to be able to keep up the steady rhythm of even halves. The more you practice, the more stamina you develop and the longer you can keep the halves even. After a while you’ll wonder how it could ever have been difficult…
Other simple rhythms are also worth learning, such as alternating a whole beat and two half beats or playing only the off-beat halves (the “ands”). This latter is the basis of syncopation (more on this in another post). It’s also worth learning to divide a beat into uneven pairs, long then short, called swing or swung eighths. Effectively, the long note is 2/3 of a beat and the short note, 1/3 of a beat. Another good exercise is to divide the beat into thirds, 3 equal parts.
The above exercises form the basis of many common rhythms.
More timing practice
Playing in time is one of the critical skills required when playing in an ensemble, whether a duo, band, choir or orchestra. Complete musicianship teaching methods are available, covering timing, rhythm, pitching intervals and more.
In my upcoming music theory book, Music Theory De-mystified, I have included two chapters on musicianship. The timing exercises above are taken from one of these chapters. The other chapter is about learning to recognise intervals (the pitch relationship between two notes) by being able to sing or play them.
This post is one of a growing series of free basic music theory lessons on my blog, musictheoryde-mystified.com. You can see the complete list here.
Please feel welcome to like, comment or to share this post. If you have any questions, pleased leave them as a comment and I will respond as soon as I can. If you enjoy my posts and would like to be kept up to date, please subscribe.
Substantial parts of this post, including the movies above, are taken from Music Theory De-mystified, my upcoming music theory e-book, due to be released late 2023.
