Understanding Music Interval Types
Music intervals are the pitches heard in a piece of music that can tell you a lot about how the piece was arranged and what it is supposed to achieve.
In music theory, a musical interval is a marked difference in pitch between adjacent notes.
There are music intervals in almost every piece of music you will hear.
The easiest way to think about them is to think of each interval as being the difference between two notes that are played simultaneously, you could try these out.
This means that the notes G and A are considered to be one interval, while the exact interval between C and E is one octave higher than the first interval.
Accidental music intervals include the minor and flat notes, which are just two notes that sound as if they are part of a single interval.
For example, the minor seventh has the same pitch as the third has the same pitch as the second.
These notes do not share an exact interval.
Instead, the minor and flat notes sound together, but they occur separately because the pitch change is not one whole step.
Accidental music intervals may occur as a result of the melody or rhythm of a song.
Major music intervals, on the other hand, consist of all the notes in a scale.
This means that every note, from the fifth through the seventh, may be played as a separate note.
This is why the major and minor scales are the most important ones to play in most music.
Notice that the words "major" and "minor" do not have the same interval-sounds.
Major music intervals are also often referred to as sharps and flats.
These two terms can sometimes be used interchangeably with "tones," which is another misleading term that should only be used when describing the range of tones a chord occurs.
Other types of music intervals are modes, diminished chords, and diminished triads.
A mode is a repeated pattern, much like a phrase, that repeats throughout a song (a Mode is a repeated section of a song's musical notes).
Diminished chords have two parts, a low note, and a high note.
The high note is usually the root note, while the low note is called the following tone.
A diminished triad has the same basic melody as the major or minor pentatonic scales.
Whole Steps and Whole Chords There are several types of intervals involving four notes or more.
Whole Steps are similar to minor chords in that each note in the progression always occurs between three notes before it, but they repeat all the way to the end of the progression.
For example, the first beat of a song would usually contain three whole steps.
It would then transition into the next beat using the off-beat foot pedals for the fourth and fifth notes.
A similar transition can be found in the chorus of a song as well.
Harmonic Intervals The main difference between a melodic minor scale and a harmonic interval lies in the rhythm.
In a melodic minor scale, the rhythm is always major.
That is to say, the beat always comes after the note it contains.
This is not true for the harmonic interval.
The beat of the progression can be followed by any note in the scale, and can even be a half step down.
The two notes of a harmonic interval do not change in rhythm and they don't end either.
Unison The simplest type of interval is a pure harmonic interval where all notes are played together at the same time.
This is not true for all types of music because some intervals lack a third note, such as the open sixth.
While most chord progressions can be played using pure unison intervals, sometimes it is more beneficial to use other types of intervals.
The most common use for unions in music is creating a lyrical cadence where all notes match in rhythm and tempo.
Half-Step Intervals Most music intervals consist of two different musical notes, but a half-step interval takes place of one of the notes.
It is a natural interval and can appear as a bass note, a treble note, or a bass and treble note.
The term 'half-step' is derived from the fact that the interval occurs twice as long as the note is replaced.
If you play a C chord, played at half-step speed, and then another C chord played at the same speed, they would play twice as long as each other.
So a C chord played at half-step speed would be called a tritone, or a sixth of a tone.