Well, to make a long video about relatable music theory a short sentence that describes their physical essence, a interval is a measure of the specific distance between two pitches. Now some of you might be crying out "What's it measured by? Inches? Centimeters?", but you're thinking about music like it's a form of math, and while it's technically possible to measure notes by the frequency and wavelength of their tone, we're going to stay focused on the bar staff.
If you've ever sung in a choir or played an instrument before, you'll recognize that a standard Master Staff looks like this;
As stated before, an interval is the measure between pitches. Each note (A whole note in this case) displayed on the staff above represents a audible pitch that we can distinguish on any variety of instruments. Now in this instance the notes are arranged in a scale (any set of musical notes arranged by fundamental frequency or pitch) and the intervals are very small. This is because the distance between the notes in a scale are small, but still distinguishable. Now as these notes begin to spread out along the staff, or be arranged so that they aren't separated by whole steps, we begin to hear and see intervals.
Notice that if intervals are labeled by the amount of "Lines & Spaces" that they span across. For example (assuming you can read a standard Treble Clef), the interval between middle C and F is a 4th because there are 4 lines and spaces involved in the interval (Thats two lines, and two spaces if you want to be picky).
So using this method of basic interval recognition, we can discern that specific intervals will have a constant sound or "feeling" to them when played on an instrument or sung.
This is the overall point of this post, because while some "good" choir students may be content in learning that the second of a major scale is always "Rae" and the seventh is always "Te", I find it's more helpful to recognize intervals in classical music by using examples from songs that we all learned as children when growing up.
But just in case you're curious about Solfège, this is how it line's up with music notation. ----------->
(For the basic gist of it, ignore the sharps and flats)
Let me enlighten you with an example. We all know how the song "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" goes, but can you hear the major 5th in the song? It's when you sing "Twinkle Twinkle" in the song. That's an interval, and a great example of a perfect 5th (P5). Another example is in the wedding song "Here Comes the Bride". When you sing "Here-comes", you're singing a Perfect 4th (P4).
To make this simple, let's just plot everything out;
- Minor 2nd: "Jaws"
- Major 2nd "Happy Birthday"
- Minor 3rd: "Brahms Lullaby"
- Major 3rd: "Kum Ba Yah"
- Perfect 4th: "Here Comes the Bride"
- Perfect 5th: "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"
- Minor 6th: "The Entertainer"
- Major 6th: "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean"
- Minor 7th: "There's a Place for Us" (West Side Story)
- Major 7th: "Superman Theme"
- Perfect 8th: "Somewhere over the Rainbow"
Here's a link to a website that has a bunch of songs that help you memorize basic interval patterns;
VUC Music Theory (It also explains what the symbols mean: "P"5 or "M"3)
Now this post deals more with Ear Training than anything else, but it's still important to understand the critical theory behind it. By using this method, of recognizing that intervals are everywhere in modern music, it'll be a lot easier to sight read complex pieces of music and get the intervals right the first time. This skill is also invaluable in choral singing when one voice part has to find their next note based of one they sang a couple measure ago or one given by another voice part.
Oh, and if you want to learn more about Solfège and the "classy" way to learn how to sing on pitch, check out this website; Sol What? Some Thoughts on Solfège . This guy has some great reasons why solfège should still be used, so if you want clarification about it, go to him!
I hope this was helpful, I use this process all the time in the many choirs I'm involved in, so I hope you can put this to good use too!
Sincerely, ZS
*Also, I'll be allowing comments from now on. Please keep them appropriate and relevant to the topic at hand, and if you have an requests for what I should post next list them below! Thanks!*
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