Songs that will help you identify ascending intervals

this video is sponsored by tone gym being able to identify an interval by ear being able to hear two different notes and to know what the gap is between them what the interval is between them is an incredibly valuable skill as a musician that was a perfect fit by the way it makes you a better improviser it makes you a better composer but most of all it means that you can hear a melody whether it's on the radio or in your head and know how to translate it onto your instrument without going beyond the octave and staying within western music of course there are 12 different intervals 12 different potential gaps between two given notes and each of these intervals has names like the perfect fifth the minor third the major seventh so to be able to recognize those intervals just by hearing them you could just listen to a bunch of them you could listen to a bunch of minor thirds or perfect fifths and try and get used to the way they sound and that certainly does work but something that can work really well in tandem with that something that's slightly more musical is to associate each of the 12 intervals with a famous example with a famous melody that uses that interval so for example the perfect fifth or the interval i played you a minute ago a lot of people associate that interval with star wars because the first two notes of the star wars main theme [Music] are a perfect fifth so what we're going to do today is i'm going to give you at least one example for all 12 of these intervals and i'm going to give you an extra interval a 13th interval one that goes beyond to the octave because this particular one that we'll look at i think is particularly useful to know so let's start with the smallest interval possible in western music the minor second otherwise known as the semitone or half step in some ways this is one of the easier intervals to identify because the notes are so close to each other that you can't really imagine a smaller interval particularly if you're a western musician you're not used to hearing anything smaller than that so if it sounds like it couldn't get any smaller it probably is a semitone but the example which is a classic example really [Music] is the jaws theme by john williams [Music] the bulk of that theme is literally pivoting back and forth between e and f [Music] a semitone so if you can hear something and the interval sounds the same as the jaws theme you know it's a semitone next is the major second otherwise known as the tone or the whole step and this is also not too hard to remember because it's the smallest gap you hear at the beginning of the major scale so if you're really familiar with the sound of the major scale the gap between the two first notes is a tone so that can be useful but of course we want a song we want a melody so still quite a basic melody but definitely valuable for this [Music] first two notes [Music] major second so if you can just think of the first two notes of ferrari that's your tone your major second the next interval is the minor third so the minor third has a particularly minor sound to it to me just in that one interval you get the sense of the minor key so that's the example i'm going with today mad world all around me are familiar faces the first two notes in the melody to mad world [Music] are going up from f to a flat and back down again a minor third our next interval is the major third so i think the easiest way to identify the major third is think about the major chord if you go through the notes of a major chord this is b major first two are a major third apart and a song that literally starts by outlining a major chord is stevie wonder's sir duke [Applause] so those first two notes is a major third similar song that does a similar thing is um let's dance by david barry that also outlines a chord at the beginning and although it's not necessarily a major chord it's a dominant chord a dominant seven the first two notes that we get in that chord are still a major third [Music] so those first two notes e flat and g for a major third [Applause] [Music] the next interval is the perfect fourth so my example for the perfect fourth is well let's see if you recognize it so summer nights by greece or from greece and the first two notes in that bass line that's a perfect half [Music] the next interval is the tritone sometimes referred to as the augmented fourth or the diminished fifth all depending on context and this interval is often considered to either be the most or one of the most dissonant intervals in western music it's got a real foreboding sound to it that's c and f sharp [Music] and um it's often associated with the devil there's this um now quite extensively disproven myth thanks to adam neely that this tritone was banned by the catholic church because it was associated with the devil now that's not true but you can definitely hear why that connotation would have existed why that myth came to be because it has got that very unusual dark sound to it so let's talk about a couple of examples what about this so yyz by rush is a great example of a tritone that whole intro section is just vamping on that tritone [Applause] and another example in quite a different style [Music] so that opening tag from the simpsons is going up a tritone for them resolving onto the fifth note of the scale and you can hear as we move from the dissonant tritone to the very constant perfect fifth that tension disappears and that can be a very good thing to listen out for when you are trying to identify interval if it sounds tense if it sounds particularly dissonant you could be dealing [Music] now before we look at the next interval i actually want to talk to you about today's sponsor because today it's actually something super relevant to what we're doing tone gym is an ear training tool that musicians can use to improve their perception of intervals tone gym basically makes ear training into a game for example their departures game will play you an interval and then you have to guess what that interval is when you get the answer right you progress to different levels with more and more challenging intervals or if you wanted to improve rhythm instead then you could play their rhythmic parrot game where they play you a rhythm and then you have to tap it back improving your ear will do wonders for your musicianship and tone gym is genuinely a great tool for improving your ear training use the link in the description to find out more about tone gym thanks very much so that takes us on to the perfect fifth and the perfect we've already talked about a bit at the beginning it's the star wars interval so first two notes of star wars b flat and f are a perfect fifth and the character of a perfect fifth is that it just sounds very at rest it sounds very resolved and consonant the only place really that sounds more at rest than a perfect fifth is the octave and for that reason sometimes people confuse a perfect fifth for an octave so that's something to look out for but star wars isn't the only john williams theme to have that perfect fifth featuring so prominently at the beginning [Music] so the first two notes of et theme are also a perfect fifth [Music] [Applause] the next interval is the minus sixth so that minor sixth a bit like the perfect fourth can very much sound different depending on the context that you hear it in if you were in uh the minor key for example so in c minor and then go up a minor sixth it sounds like it wants to resolve it has a tension to it sounds like it wants to resolve down [Music] well that's just the context doing that the interval the minor sixth on its own in isolation it's quite a pure sound it sounds resolved so in different contexts it can have a different quality to it it's not one of those intervals that sounds um dissonant or consonant it's sort of in the middle so a great song that you can use for the minor six and the reason that i'm on this slightly cheesy saxophone sound the first two notes of the baker street sex line [Music] [Applause] and another song quite different song that you can use as a reference point for the minor sith is actually the entertainer the main melody from scott joplin's the entertainer features this that is a minor sixth and as you can hear in this context that sounds really resolved because it's the third and root note of the tonic chord can't really get more resolved than that but it is that minor sixth again so the next interval is the major sixth and very much like the minor sixth this interval doesn't particularly sound dissonant or consonant it all kind of comes down to the context so if i go between c and a that's a major sixth and on its own [Music] at least in this context to me it sounds like it wants to go down onto the fifth degree of the scale and this is actually the context in which it's used um in the song that i'm going to give you which is the christmas song the holly and the ivy so the gap between the first two pictures is [Music] so next on the list is the minor seventh and the minor seventh um i've got two quite different examples four so the minor seven for example [Music] is the gap between e and d above it and in this context i think it sounds kind of like it wants to resolve somewhere and that's how it works in the melody which i'm going to show you which is leonard bernstein's somewhere from west side story [Music] that first two notes in that melody are a minor seventh [Music] but that's not the song which i grew up associating in minor seventh with the song that i grew up listening to a man 74 is [Music] which is why i run this stupid snap bass sound so in that bass line and can't stop by the red hot chili peppers the first two notes in the bass line e d r a minor seventh and then you can hear it resolve to the octave [Music] so the last interval before we reach the octave is the major seventh the major seventh particularly in isolation it's quite a dissonant sound [Music] but as you may have found with all of these intervals today once you get them into context it doesn't always sound as distant as it might in isolation so here i'm playing a going up to g sharp so we're almost at the octave and that's one of the things to listen out for with a major seventh does it sound like it almost is knocked out does it sound like it wants to resolve onto the octave and that's actually what happens in the example that i'm going to give you which is um take on me by aha so the main chorus and the chorus melody begins with [Music] it's obviously a very wide interval and that's why that melody that chorus is quite well known for being hard to sing because it's got right in the middle of it a major seventh and that takes us to the most continent of intervals the most pleasing the octave so the octave is in some ways actually quite easy to detect because an octave two notes an octave apart sound like the same note just higher and low that's why we give them the same name that's an a-flat and this note an octave above it's also an a-flat of course it's still really good to have a song though and the song i'm going to show you is really a very classic example of um of an octave and that is somewhere over the rainbow [Music] so i think that is almost the most foolproof song example you can have for that it's right at the beginning of the song it's quite dragged out it's not a brief octave that that song [Music] lasts long enough to really latch onto it so that's the 12 intervals of western music the 12 intervals that fall within the octave and including the octave but as i mentioned at the start i also want to talk to you about one of the intervals that goes beyond the octave the minor ninth now when we talk about intervals we very rarely talk about the intervals that go beyond the octave but it can be useful to know about them and the minor knight in particular i think can be a valuable one to be able to identify so why don't we talk about the intervals that go beyond the octave well as far as i can see there's two main reasons the first reason is that they almost have the same quality as their equivalent within the octave what i mean by that is imagine we have a major third c and e if i put that e an octave higher [Music] it's no longer a major third it's now actually a major tenth but you've probably never heard of a tenth and that's because [Music] both intervals have a very similar quality [Music] they both sound very consonant they both sound fairly at rest [Music] so we kind of group them in as the same thing we treat them as the same thing after all it is still c and e and c and e they're very much the same thing from a certain point of view the other reason i don't think we often talk about intervals that go beyond the octave it's because intervals are about melody about listening to musical melodies and melodies are usually sung by a human voice and it's quite difficult to sing an interval that wide it's not very natural thing to do not a very intuitive thing to do it doesn't actually sound particularly melodic so you don't really encounter that many melodies that use these wide intervals i couldn't actually think of any examples for this video so if you can think of some examples about major temps or things that are wider than the octave then let me know but the one interval which i think can be valuable to know beyond the octave is the minor knife and that's not just because it's only a bit wider than the octave and it's also not just because i have a good example but i do have a good example the reason is because i think that the minor knife actually sounds kind of different than the minor second which is it's equivalent within the octave so for example if i have d and e flat that's a minor second a semitone [Music] but if i put the e flat an octave higher [Music] still sounds tense it still sounds dissonant like the minor second did but i don't think it sounds as dissonant it sounds a little bit less distant doesn't have that rub that you get when the two notes are literally next door to each other and therefore i think that the minor second has a different sound than the minor knife even though they're both d and e flat d and e flat so that's why i think it's valuable to know now you're probably wondering why am i on this weird keyboard sound and that's because of the example that i want to show you for a minor knife killing in the name of by rage against the machine that bass line is d going up beyond the octave to e flat a minor knight [Music] so that is 13 intervals and songs that you can use to try and get the sound of that interval into your ears into your head so when you hear it in other contexts you can pluck it out and obviously there's plenty more songs you could have used for this purpose and i'm sure the comments will be full of other great examples so do check that out as well [Music] and as always a massive massive thanks goes to everyone who supports me on patreon including the names you see on screen right now and andre science diagram andy deacon andrew andrew brown andrew sussman austin barrett austin russell bob mckinstry blue medal whitney parker cameron alvila colin aiken chris cabal christopher ryan david bennett is heart david rivers donald howard dr darren wicks elena scorchenko eugene leroy fd hodor greg kapowski iolamo latona hamish brookel bank hernick kutcher hugo miller ivan pang jake fisher james ko j.a hokensparker john dye josh sandolin justin vigger mark ziegenhagen max o'keefe melody composer square melanie shonat michael vivian nancy guillard nathan lawrence nathaniel park nick chang paul middleton peter dunphy richard pride roger clay john kennedy steve daly stephen lazzaro tim beaker homer aharoni trisha adams tim payne victor levy vidad flowers vladimir kodakov vaulty royland fairbanks and zappod [Music]

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 950,253

Keywords: intervals, examples, ear training, how to recogize, identify intervals, music theory, songs for remembering, melody, famous, how to, tutorial, relative pitch

Id: PhDIm_2qS5s

Length: 22min 24sec (1344 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 23 2021