Intervals for Grade 5, Augmented / diminshed / major / minor Options

[linda.ff]

This probably isn't any help, but solfa is a great and uncomplicated way to learn intervals - to be able to hear them, sing them, recognise them aurally and visually. My 10-11 year olds at Guildhall are very, very comfortable with all the pentatonic intervals. The 'inversion rule' is easily understood and really helps.

Wish I'd been taught this way!

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I remember "hearing" the interval in my grade 5 theory back in 1960? 61? becasue I had grasped the internalisation skill early in life (clever? no. lucky, yes) And I got it wrong. E up to C. Lovely major chord sound in my head. It may even have been in the context of a piece of music in C major, which wold have reinforced the feeling. Major 6th obviously. except of course it isn't, as I realised soon after the exam. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)

[Seer_Green]

I'm afraid I count semitones!

I don't think anyone should have to apologise for the method they use - if it works for you, as it does for me, that's great.

[VH2]

All these methods are very well as crutches to be eventually thrown away (and some are better than others - I think there is a tendency to overcomplicate, and to assume that one's own personal strange methods will work for everyone)

But the real goal is to hear an interval and simply know what it is (and going one stage further, if it can have different functions, hence different names, depending on context, to hear that too)

[kenm]

But the real goal is to hear an interval and simply know what it is (and going one stage further, if it can have different functions, hence different names, depending on context, to hear that too)

Well, any interval played in equal temperament is ambiguous and can have more than one function, so you have to know the context to be sure you have the right name. My wife tells me that she was taught that if she was asked, in an exam, to name a tritone, she should ask the examiner to resolve it. If the interval resolves outward, it is an augmented fourth (e.g. B above F -> C above E); if it resolves inward (e.g. F above B -> E above C) it is a diminished fifth.

As I'm sure I've posted on here before, the French work out intervals by counting tones and semi-tones. I must confess that I find it excessively complicated and find it easier to think about the key signature but it goes something like this:
From very early on children have it drilled into them that a major scale is T,T,S,T,T,T,S (T= tone, S = semitone).
If you have an interval C-E you know that you have two tones so it is a major third
C-Eb is a tone + a semi-tone so it is a minor third
C-E# is a tone + a semi-tone + a semi-tone so it is an augmented third.
Whereas C-F = tone + tone + semi-tone and so is a fourth.

I don't think you have this quite right. C-E# is two tones + a semitone and is an augmented third. C-F is two tones + a semitone and is a perfect fourth. The difference is that E-E# is a chromatic semitone whereas E-F is a diatonic semitone. To make semitone counting work the French must be able to distinguish diatonic and chromatic semitones and also remember the constitution of all the intervals they expect to meet: that's 28 of them in 20th C music, excluding double augmentation and diminution, which are still pretty rare.

The method described in violincjj's excellent second post is much less work and, with minor extension, copes with multiple augmentation and diminution too.