Interval Recognition

This article serves as a guide for my first year Understanding Music Theory students but is also a go-to for anyone who wants to improve their musical ear. I am far off a natural when it comes to pitch recognition and it took me putting in the hours developing this skill.

Interval recognition is something that can help immeasurably with composition – being able to fluidly transcribe melodies from your head to your page or DAW. However, unless you’re blessed with this skill from birth, it takes some working at.

How to Identify Intervals?

When trying to ascertain what an interval is I do several thing. Firstly identify if the interval is ascending or descending (rising or falling). This might be something you have to put the work in yourself on, but hearing whether or not a sequence of two pitches starts low and moves high or starts high or vice versa is something that you should be able to identify with time. One thing to bare in mind that held me back, particularly with lyrics – just because the word or syllable changes, does not mean the pitch does! Practise identifying when the interval does not change and stays the same.

Then ask yourself, is it consonant or dissonant? This is a complicated subject matter in some regards because firstly “dissonance” and what that means is subjective and contextual, but you have to image the two notes playing simultaneously. For “consonant” intervals I imagine thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths and octaves. For “dissonant” intervals I think minor second, tritone and sevenths. The major second could be one or the other, depending on who you speak to. It’s really up to you to define your own categorisation that help you identify these intervals.

Lastly I ask myself is the interval close or wide. Anything under a tritone I deem to be “close” and anything above it sounds “wide” to me. I’m sure there are times where I’ve not stuck to this religiously, but as a general rule of thumb this feels right.

Minor Second (1 semitone)

A minor second is an interval of one semitone. From the tonic or root of a scale it doesn’t appear naturally in the major or minor, but can be see in the phrygian and locrian modes. However there are natural semitones in the major scale (between scale degrees three to four and seven to eight) and in the minor scale (two to three and five to six).

The “resolution” of seven to eight in a major scale, or leading tone to tonic, is one that will crop up in many of these examples. This can be heard in the opening two syllables in Disney’s 1951 Alice in Wonderland, moving from C# to D.

Other times the minor second is used more for its namesake, the minor second has a close association with the horror or thriller genre. Below is John Williams’ Jaws, which may have taken some inspiration form the 4th movement of Dvořák’s New World Symphony.

Henry Mancini’s The Pink Panther theme has a series of minor seconds ascending from C# to E, harmonised with perfect fifths:

The Christmas carol Joy to the World has a descending minor second, in-fact the whole first lyrics descends from the tonic to dominant.

In the following two examples were hear an oscillating minor second, in the case of Hard Day’s Night, from the leading tone to tonic and back again, and Isn’t She Lovely from the mediant to sub-dominant and back again.

The next two examples both have intricate movement around the tonic in a harmonic minor scale.

In this last example, the top line of the melody is almost chromatic in this opening passage, moving from C# to D to C#, B# (enharmonically C), C# again, D, D# and finally E. This is harmonised with a third underneath it.

Major Second (2 semitones)

The major second interval is two semitones, or two notes one tone apart. From the tonic to the supertonic it appears in both the major and natural minor scale, as well as many modes and synthetic scales to boot. Aside from perhaps the perfect fifth this was one of the most abundant intervals I could find examples of and had to stop myself including too many examples that would dilute the point of the list.

Let’s start with Frozen’s Let it Go. The first two words of the chorus “let” and “it” ascends a major second from F to G.

The James Bond theme has an ascending major second from E to F#, while the second bar ascends a minor third to G.

Stevie Wonder’s Superstition is mostly pentatonic but has a clear alternating major second degree in the opening verse lyric and throughout:

The chorus of ABBA’s Mamma Mia starts almost entirely with major second intervals, using just the super tonic and tonic degrees of D major, with a hint of the mediant in the second bar.

Ryuichi Sakamoto’s theme music for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is another clear example of pentatonic melody writing. I’ve highlighted in blue the major second intervals.

Minor Third (3 semitones)

A minor third is an interval of three semitones. It appears between the root and third degree of minor scales but perhaps more pertinent the minor pentatonic, a fertile breeding ground for melodic material when writing vocal lines and melodies.

The White Stripe’s Seven Nation Army and The Amazing Spider Man TV theme are both based on the minor pentatonic (or blues scale in the case of Spider Man). The minor third intervals are highlighted in pink:

The next two examples have descending minor third intervals, with Elton John’s Can you Feel… containing three.

The Beverly Hills Cop theme starts with an ascending and descending minor third interval:

Lastly, another John Williams composition, the Imperial March from Star Wars. This is an interesting theme for several reasons but notice the many minor thirds, all descending. We have three examples of Bb to G and a Gb to Eb.

Major Third (4 semitones)

The major third is an interval that is four semitones and appears between the root and third degree of all major scales. As well as this it is also present in the major pentatonic, and like the minor pentatonic above has been used to create many melodies.

Below are three examples of the ascending major thirds. All from the tonic to the mediant scale degree.

Gershwin’s Summertime from Porgy and Bess starts with an alternating major third.

Lastly the Life theme from Prometheus (the Alien prequel) has a nice ascending and descending major third in the french horn theme:

Perfect Fourth (5 semitones)

The name suggest the interval is somehow infallible, which is just a quirk of twelve tone equal temperament (or 12TET). The interval (along with the fifth which we mention a little further down) is not actually perfect, but that’s a subject for another article. A perfect fourth is five semitones, which can confuse some people. It’s called a perfect fourth because it is the fourth degree of a diatonic major or minor scale.

My own reference for a perfect fourth is the first two syllables of Amazing Grace:

We can also hear really clear ascending perfect fourths in Wagner’s Bridal March, Disney’s Someday my Prince will come, the Star Trek Next Generation Theme (composed by Jerry Goldsmith), the main theme from The Great Escape and the Vangelis score for Chariots of Fire:

For some descending perfect fourths, the chorus of Michael Jackson’s Rock with you and the Overture from Lawrence of Arabia come to mind.

Lastly Ennio Morricone’s The Good the Bad and the Ugly has alternating perfect fourths:

Augmented Fourth/Diminished Fifth (6 semitones)

This interval can have different names depending on the context. I was going to go with “tritone” – an interval of six semitones or more literally as the name suggests, three tones. We can also think of the interval as an alteration of a fourth (augmented) or fifth (diminished). We can also see this interval in relation to the root note appear in the lydian (raised fourth) or locrian (flattened fifth) modes.

Leonard Bernstein’s Maria from West Side Story famously has a tritone in the word “Maria”:

Don’t Stop ’til you get Enough starts each stanza in the verse with a descending tritone. We also hear an example of this in Pearl Jam’s Even Flow.

Danny Elfman Simpson’s theme has a tritone in the upper voice, from C to F# before resolving to G.

Perfect Fifth (7 semitones)

Just like the perfect fourth, the perfect fifth is the fifth degree of a major or minor scale. It is a hugely important interval too because of its natural appearance in the harmonic overtone series of acoustic notes. Next to the octave it is the interval we could most safely play along side another note without fear of inharmonic acoustic beating, or dissonance.

Let’s start with some ascending perfect fifths. The jazz standard Come Fly with me contain a number of perfect fifths in the opening lyric. There is also some iconic perfect fifths in the theme from Goldfinger, another standard, Moon River and the main theme from Star Wars.

We can hear some descending perfect fifths in Duke Ellington’s It don’t mean a thing…, the Star Trek Voyager opening credits and the theme music to Hanna-Barbera’a The Flintstones.

Minor Sixth (8 semitones)

Sixths are interesting intervals because it is possible to think about them as inverted thirds. The minor sixth is eight semitones, but it’s possible to think about it as a major third below the octave root. Like thirds, fifths and fourths, sixths are important in writing harmony parts. The minor sixth is the sixth degree of the natural minor scale.

I always identify this interval using the French national anthem:

We can also hear examples of ascending minor sixth intervals in The Beatles In my Life, at the end of the opening phrase of Mozart’s Symphony no. 40 in G minor and between “red” and “nosed” in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer:

…as well as the opening figure of Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer:

For an example of a descending minor sixth we can look to another Mozart composition, Requiem, which is in D minor. The Lacrimosa (or Lacrymosa as I’ve seen it spelled) contains a descending minor sixth at the end of the opening phrase:

Major Sixth (9 semitones)

The major sixth is nine semitones above the root. Much like the minor sixth I sometimes think about it as a minor third below the root. As the name suggests the major sixth is the sixth degree of the major scale.

Robbie William’s Angels has a clear ascending major sixth at the front of the first verse.

This is also present in Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call me Maybe in the chorus, between “is” and “crazy”.

There’s also a clear example during the verses of Jingle Bells:

Lastly for ascending major sixth intervals we can hear one in Chopin’s Nocturne Op 9 No. 2 in Eb major.

Examples of descending major sixths were few-and-far between, but in the chorus of Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror we can hear one between “I’m” and “starting”:

Minor Seventh (10 semitones)

The minor seventh is ten semitones above the tonic. We hear it appear naturally in the natural minor scale but also the mixolydian mode. The appearance of the minor seventh (or flattened seventh) on top of a major chord creates a dominant seventh chord – a chord that has great significance with a certain style of harmonic, tonal European music.

I only managed to find ascending minor seventh intervals – perhaps it’s particularly difficult to sing descending? First of is ABBA’s The Winner Takes it all, where we can hear two examples, D to C (The Win-ner) and B to A (los-ser):

There’s also a minor seventh interval in the original 1966 Star Trek theme music:

We can hear a minor seventh in the opening guitar part of Steely Dan’s Josie and also another West Side Story song, Somewhere:

Major Seventh (11 semitones)

The major seventh is eleven semitones above the root note, which is also one semitone below it. Common practise composers would call this the leading tone because of how regularly it would precede a tonic note and usually be accompanied by a V to I cadence.

Similarly to the minor seventh, descending major sevenths were nowhere to be found. Let’s start with Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley’s Pure Imagination, sung by Gene Wilder in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from 1971.

A-Ha’s Take on Me contains a major seventh in the chorus from a low A to a G# before resolving up to the A above it.

And lastly, the Norah Jones composition Don’t Know Why contains a major seventh between “I” and “Waited”:

Octave (12 semitones)

Lastly we have an octave, a note twelve semitones above a root, or twelve semitones below it. It’s the only interval in our list that is the same on the way up or down.

There is examples of ascending octaves in Over the Rainbow (from The Wizard of Oz, going from the tonic to the tonic) and Singing in the Rain and When you wish upon a Star, which both go from the dominant to the dominant tone.