I have to be able to spot a harmonic interval by hearing it (by Monday) and I assumed I'd be fine at this, but guess what...

The examiner will play two notes simultaneously and I have to say "major 6th", "augmented 4th" or whatever. I'm not bad at identifying melodic intervals - I've learned the first two notes to a lot of songs both going up and down. But it doesn't work harmonically. Has anyone got any ideas on how to spot these?

Don't worry!! I had to do this with trinity, its a piece of cake once you've got it. Practise with this website http://www.musictheory.net/trainers/html/id90_en.html It will REALLY help!
Now for identifiying them, listen carefully, sing it back and now think which one fits-
Minor 2nd think jaws or the start of fur elise
Major 2nd pretend you are playing a scale, its the next note
Minor 3rd Sing the start of Greensleves ("A-las") and ta-dahh thats your interval
Major 3rd Pretend you are playing an arpeggio, its the first 2 notes
Perfect 4th I use "Should auld" from Old Lang Syne but there's lots to choose from
Perfect 5th "La-ven" from lavenders blue
Minor 6th Think of that bit in the entertainer, play a minor 6th on your instrument and then you'll know what I mean!
Major 6th "My Bo-" from my My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean
Minor 7th ""There's a" from Somewhere from Westside Story
Major 7th think of it as it doesn't sound complete until you go up a semitone to make an octave
Octave "Some-where" from somewhere over the rainbow
Sorry, I never had to do the tritone so I don't know that.
Ok, I've just re-read your post and realised you're not stuck on this part. When he plays the 2 notes together, sing them separately in your head (or out loud if you're allowed) and then use the rules as above. The website I gave you will also help in identifying harmonic ones! Good luck and let us know how you get on. I've had to write this really quickly so I'm sorry for any spelling mistakes!
Lil_miz_music xx

Wow - thanks! - it does harmonic intervals (as well as melodic ones). I'm going to spend 24 hours on it.




first 100 done... 16%

I don't get it, it keeps playing augmented fourths but there's nowhere to click for that interval.

Tritone?


I'm geting nowhere with this. I've tried reducing the options right down but I'm still just guessing. There's no point of reference. I can sometimes get the perfect 4th. I might just have to fail that section. I HATE aural - how on earth are you supposed to train to do this?

I've done 1000 now and average 11% correct.

I was helping a pupil with these today as her Grade 4 LCM exam is next week. She came for an extra lesson because she was worried about recognising them too. I use a similar method to already mentioned here - with the tunes - but sometimes there isn't time to recall them when you're put on the spot in the exam. I think it helps to try and relate one interval to another and try improvising around with them on the piano exploring the sounds and see how they behave. For example, we did the major 7th - it wants to go up as the leading note wants to resolve on to doh but the minor 7th wants to fall a step to make a major 6th. Remember the sound of the minor 7th in a dominant 7th chord wanting to fall to the 3rd of the tonic chord. Another one we tried was recognising a perfect 5th (a good medieval drone sound for the bass) going up to a minor 6th and back again - sounds quite nice For the major/minor thirds we thought about scales and arpeggios too but also tried singing Three Blind Mice back to the tonic and which one sounded right to make it major. Doesn't a tritone sound like 'broken glass'?

Good luck

Well, firstly ... don't panic - it's not the end of the world if you don't get this in time for the exam. Worse things have happened! If I really can't do something, I try to have a grin about it instead.

Secondly - do you try singing each of the two notes, one after the other?? I sometimes say to pupils to imagine that you're 'looking' at the interval from a distance, and you can't tell the two notes apart ... then imagine you're getting closer and closer till you can actually take hold of each of the notes and pull them apart, so you can get your head in between the two notes: look up at the top one, and down on the bottom one. Can you sing them now?? (Hmm, this sounds really silly like this, but sometimes the imagery works!!)

And if you've got access to a keyboard (or better still, a piano), have a session playing intervals, firstly one note after the other, then more quickly, till you play both notes at the same time. (One hint - don't listen to the attack of the piano notes, but listen carefully to the sustained sound after ... this is when you can 'get your head in between the notes' to 'have a good look at them'.) Keep singing both notes, one after the other. Can you still hear the two notes you're singing in the piano interval? I think a good session with a piano would helpful.

But, as I say, don't panic if you don't 'get it' in time. It'll only be a mark or two, and you'll lose far more marks if you're all het up about some small thing like this. Enjoy everything else that you know you can do!

Tritone is the beginning of Dance Macabre, even better its sounded harmonically and melodically.

Cheer up, reduce the intervals to 2. 1st do unison and minor 2nd, surely you can recognise unison? Then minor 2nd and major 2nd...etc...
DON'T just guess and click on the interval.
-Think really hard
-sing the 2 notes
-then think really hard again
-what song does that song like?
-think a bitty harder(!) and maybe sing the interval again to check you are correct
-NOW click the button
At first, sit with my post about recognising the intervals in front of you. As long as you can match the interval with the song you will be fine. You can learn the names that match the songs later, or tomorrow(!!)
I really hope this works for you, it did for me. As others have said, its about 1 mark so there really is nothing to worry about

Thank you both Busybee & Brian for taking the time to write such full replies and suggestions. I'll give it a go at the piano - but as it is only a couple of marks I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

It's making me cross more than anything else .

& Thanks lil miz music too

Oops, just done the chords test and the interval test and got 100/100 for both. It's just the way my brain works, or something. Teaching it is something else though, and I suspect the Kodaly method is probably the best way. Now to do the scale test...

Not awfully helpful now but I think you are meant to be working towards it from grade 1 upwards.
It's not easy to try to cram 5 grades work into two weeks.

Got 100/100 for the scales test as well. How to train? Start simple, play a lot, play simple intervals, count notes between, visualise keyboard, keep practising, practising, practising...

I probably wouldn't be so good at the recognising key signatures bit, though - because my strength is more on the aural side than the theory. Will go off and try them.

See below...



Yes, it is, but...



...it's not a quick fix and, as with any good teaching, needs to be done slowly and systematically in order to have the greatest effect.

Sorry, Alicia Ocean, again I know this isn't very helpful to you now - but you've had some good advice which should help you at the moment.

100/100 on the key signatures but then they're pretty easy when you know the two tricks:

to work out a key signature when it has flats, it's the second to last flat.
to work out a key signature when it has sharps, go one semitone higher than the last sharp.

Exceptions: C = no sharps or flats
F = one sharp

Cyrilla and Sbhoa are right, there are no quick fixes - learning to recognise intervals takes a lot of time and practice.

I think this is the problem with so much instrumental teaching and learning these days; the technique of the instrument is learnt, sight-reading is learnt, but aural training isn't being learnt alongside or preferably prior to all this.

One of the children I teach (in a string group) spent two years when she was little doing Kodaly-type workshops before she took up piano and then violin. Her ear is second to none and she can transpose and play by ear at the drop of a hat. Everybody thinks she's extraordinary but I think it all goes back to that early aural training she was lucky enough to have.

95/100 on the triads, doing them in my head. Grrrrr.

Wow - not had to do this in a LONG time.

Got 100% on the melodic intervals, but not so hot on the harmonic ones - kept getting my perfect 4ths and perect 5ths mixed up - although the others were mostly fine.

The way I do it is just to sing both notes, make it a melodic interval and work it out from there.

for harmonic intervals i just treat the notes as if they were played separately and calculate the interval by regarding the lower note as the tonic of a scale. (eg. as if i were doing g5 theory)

The best intervals to start with are those of the arpeggios, which you will already know - major 3rd (or minor 3rd), major 5th and octave, then gradually add the others. You can limit your options on the musictheory website, so you don't add another one until you are really confident with the ones you have started with. As others have said, it takes time and patience to become really accurate, so get going now for next time.

It's just that I'm struggling to hear them as two notes - they all sound like chords.

I've done lots of aural training btw - for ABRSM and Trinity exams. I've never come across this type of question before.

Each of the basic 2-note combinations has a unique quality of sound when the notes are sounded together - determined by the interval between the notes. On a standard keyboard (even temperament) there are twelve such combinations. I would bet that you can already hear the differences between most or all of them. It is the same skill that lets you recognize when someone plays a wrong chord in an accompaniment.

The final step that makes this percpeptual knowledge more useful, and provides the tools for musicians to talk about these things meaningfully, is to associate each of those qualities of sound with the name of the interval. To be able to do it quickly takes some repetition and practice - like most other musical skills.

I think this is also one of those learning tasks that has a natural gestation period in each person (determined by the way your brain learns, and the skills that you bring to the task). What that means is that when you have done enough practice and repetition for one day, no amount of additional work will help you learn it any faster. So as has been pointed out already, you've left this a bit late for an exam on Monday. But with the lesson learned you can go into the next exam after this one confident in your well developed Aural skills. And as has already been pointed out, it is only going to make a point or two difference so unless you are a borderline case it will make no difference to the result.

There are all kinds of useful tricks that you can use along the way as you learn (several of them in earlier posts - and excellent they are) but the ideal you are aiming for is to simply hear an interval and say "Ahh yes, perfect fifth, major sixth or whatever".

The basic triads (Major, Minor, Diminished, Augmented) and are recognized in the same way. Structured courses in Aural training gradually lead you up to being able to recognize multi-note chords with ease - at least that is the intention - I have always found that they try to cover too much ground too fast.

Musicians with a well-developed sense of perfect pitch (more accurately termed Recognition of Absolute Pitch) have another way. They can simply identify the separate notes. Like this "Hmmm a slightly flat G at the bottom and a slightly flat B above it. Allowing for the fact that the piano is a bit out of tune that means it is a major third" - and so forth.

Quite so. I categorise intervals into three different types:

Nice ones - 3rds & 6ths - these are the ones that sound nicely major or minor
Scrunchy ones - 2nds and 7ths - the really scrunchy ones are the minor 2nd & major 7th, the not-so-scrunchy ones the major 2nd & minor 7th
Neutral ones - 4th, 5th & octave - they can't sound major or minor & don't really sound like chords
The odd one - the aug 4th/dim 5th - it just sounds, well, odd.

This way you just 'feel' the interval as a unit - you sort of don't hear the two separate notes as separate notes. Having said that, I wouldn't rely on this alone for naming the intervals, certainly not while someone's learning to recognise them. But if you use these categories alongside the 'sing & count' way of naming the intervals, it should start to become second nature.

Hmm I got 52% on my first go of the harmonic intervals...I take the two notes and then sing them out loud to myself because if I sing them in my head (like I would in an exam, though) I find myself getting muddled up with the songs that I use to help me identify the interval. For example I might here a minor 3rd and because perhaps I'm think about it too much, I think...hmm...London's Burning? Even though it clearly isn't!! And after a while a find even singing it out loud is effected by this too! Grrr!!

I think practise is the key...I'm going to keep doing this exercise and keep playing intervals frequently to try to engrain them in my mind!! Gosh I wish I had perfect pitch!!

Thanks for the link to the site by the way - v useful!

The exam is done and dusted now. Thanks to everyone for their help & thank you briantrumptet for the most useful advice of all. I practiced major and minor thirds and sixths (at the piano) until I truly felt they were they were in my brain and then memorised your list. I think I was tested on a minor sixth and a diminished fifth, I'll let you know if that's correct as I'm fairly sure I got the rest of the aurals right.

As for the exam generally, it wasn't my finest hour and I messed up each piece at least twice. The problem was my combination "sightreading and memory method" which just doesn't work when the music is ten inches higher than I'm used to. I play a bit and then glance down and then back to the music - which on the exam piano was a lot further up than at home. I'm going to have to learn not to look at my hands at all. The examiner didn't write the scores in while I was there but I did read "A good attempt..." for the sight reading so fingers crossed.

That's really impressive actually! This is something I'm going to practice from now on.

My pleasure! Glad to have been of some help. I may be odd, but I just love aural.



I'm jolly glad I don't. I don't want to be tied to equal temperament at A440 as the only tuning that sounds in tune. Do I really want to be thinking "They're singing in slightly flat D-flat major" when someone strikes up 'Happy Birthday'?

Thanks Lil_miz_music for this, and to the others who have posted.

My piano teacher has decided that it would be a good thing to spend some time on recognising harmonic intervals Any further suggestions much appreciated!