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Intervals 1: Music Fundamentals 14-119-T

The document discusses the basic building blocks of music - timbre, rhythm, and harmony. It focuses on harmony, which is the relationship between pitches. Harmony can be implied in a melody or directly presented with notes sounding together. The document then explains intervals, which are the distances between two notes. It presents a chart of the twelve possible intervals within an octave, labeled by name and number of half steps. It emphasizes the importance of considering both the number of half steps and the letter names of notes when identifying intervals.

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87 views

Intervals 1: Music Fundamentals 14-119-T

The document discusses the basic building blocks of music - timbre, rhythm, and harmony. It focuses on harmony, which is the relationship between pitches. Harmony can be implied in a melody or directly presented with notes sounding together. The document then explains intervals, which are the distances between two notes. It presents a chart of the twelve possible intervals within an octave, labeled by name and number of half steps. It emphasizes the importance of considering both the number of half steps and the letter names of notes when identifying intervals.

Uploaded by

fauno_Scribd
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Intervals 1

Music Fundamentals 14-119-T

In General, the building blocks of music can by simplified by defining them as timbre, rhythm, and
harmony. We have discussed rhythm to some extent already in previous lectures. In short, timbre is
simply defined as tone color. For example, because of timbre, we can tell the difference between a
flute and violin. They have different sound colors.

Harmony in music is more difficult to explain, and is the primary focus of most music theory texts and
courses. For our purposes at this time, we can simply think of harmony as the relationship between
pitches. Harmony can be implied (eg., a succession of notes in a melody can imply a harmony) or
directly presented (eg., notes sounding at the same time). Music would not be very interesting if it
was completely monophonic, or in other words, if we only heard one note at a time. Monophony is
the earliest texture of music documented in the civilized western world, and it manifested primarily in
Gregorian Chant.1

Pitch Relations:
To have harmony, or the relationship between pitches, we must have more than one note. Remem-
ber, these notes can occur at the same time (harmonic), or they may not (melodic). It depends on the
music at which you are looking. For now, we’re going to focus on notes that occur at the same time.
We can discuss the relationship of two notes by inspecting the distance between the two notes. This
distance is called the interval. In the notation lectures we discussed the 1/2 steps and whole steps.
As long as we understand the 1/2 step, then we can find the name of any interval using the chart in
Figure 1. We also spent a good deal of time understanding a very important concept: the octave (8v),
which is an interval of twelve 1/2 steps.

Since the octave is divided into twelve 1/2 steps, we have twelve possible intervals within the octave
[see figure 1].
Figure 1

Name Abbrev. # of 1/2 steps


Minor 2nd m2 1
Major 2nd M2 2
Minor 3rd m3 3
Major 3rd M3 4
Perfect 4th P4 5
Tritone2 A4/D5 6
Perfect 5th P5 7
Minor 6th m6 8
Major 6th M6 9
Minor 7th m7 10
Major 7th M7 11
Octave 8v 12
1
There is a debate about the performance practice of this music. Some scholars believe that plainsong (syn. Gregorian Chant) was performed with
instruments and in harmony. Despite these arguments, the common performance practice for plainsong today is to have singers sing the melody in
unison (all together on the same pitch in the same rhythm).

2
The tritone is exactly 1/2 of the octave. The Augmented 4th and Diminished 5th are considered enharmonic intervals. That is, they consist of the same
number of 1/2 steps, but they are often spelled differently. This will be discussed further in a later lecture.

Intervals 1 - page 1
To implement this chart, count the number of 1/2 steps between the notes. Except for the octave, the
intervallic relationship must contain notes that are do not share the same letter name. In other words,
C up to C# is a 1/2 step; however, C up to Db is a minor 2nd.

What do the Numbers Mean?:


The chart in Figure 1 is not fool proof. You must also take into account the relationship of the letter
names. If you count up from the lower note using the musical alphabet, you will arrive at the number
of interval. For example, the relationship of C up to E (in the same octave) is a Major 3rd. That is,
count: C (1), D (2), E (3). Therefore, you should recognize that C up to Fb (the enharmonic of E) is
not a Major 3rd. Of course you should see that there are only four 1/2 steps between C and Fb, yet if
we count up from C (C(1), D(2), E(3), F(4)), we see that F is the fourth letter we reach, not the third.
Therefore, this interval is a type of 4th – not a 3rd. This interval, which is the enharmonic of a Major 3rd
because it has four 1/2 steps but is spelled differently, will be discussed later.

Conclusion:
At this time, you should begin to practice interval recognition by adding this knowledge to your knowl-
edge of the keyboard. If you remember that each adjacent key on the piano represents one 1/2 step,
then this should become clearer [see figure 2].

Figure 2
1/2 Step

I have presented a lot of information to


you in this lecture. Take time to digest
this new knowledge. It is imperative
that you fully understand Figure 1,and
how to apply this information to the
keyboard. In the next lecture, we will 2 4
1
continue our exploration of intervals. 3

C to E
four 1/2 steps
Major 3rd

Intervals 1 - page 2

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