For musicians, learning to recognize intervals is an essential part of developing their aural skills, and ultimately their overall musicianship. There are no shortage of different methodologies and mnemonic devices for learning intervals (such as using reference tunes to memorize the sounds). Their overall goal, however, is the same: give the student a set of tools to use to develop their ear to hear different sonorities as having unique qualities. In the end, a major third sounds like a major third, just as the color blue looks like the color blue!

In this article we will briefly review the naming convention for the most common intervals up to the octave. We will then think about an interval’s basic sound quality as falling into one of two categories: either consonant or dissonant. This is an important step for you to learn to recognize intervals.

Review of Intervals

You may recall that a musical interval measures the distance between any two pitches, whether played harmonically (notes together) or melodically (notes in a sequence). We measure that distance simply by counting letter names from the lower pitch to the higher one. In the example that follows, the interval C to F is a fourth, counting the C as “one”.

Intervals are named based on the number of notes they span

1. Perfect Fourth Interval Example

Because notes have sharp and flat variants, counting between letter names isn’t quite enough: we further refine the interval’s name by adding a quality to the interval. For our purposes here, we will limit our study to “perfect” unisons, fourths, fifths, and octaves, as well as the tritone (also known as a “diminished fifth” or “augmented fourth”). We will also look at major and minor seconds, thirds, sixths, and sevenths. The following example shows these intervals from C.

Example of intervals from C (click to enlarge)

2. Example of intervals from C

Consonance and Dissonance

Central to western music theory and ear training are the related concepts of consonance and dissonance. These ideas are extremely important to the way we hear music, both melodically and harmonically.

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In this article, I’m going to introduce you to the minor pentatonic scale, explain where it comes from (and why you should care), and give you some tips on how to use and recognise it in the real world.

The minor pentatonic scale is a staple of rock and blues guitar, which is also quite common in metal, punk, and other genres of music influenced by those styles. As implied by ‘pentatonic’ in the name, the minor pentatonic scale is a five note scale which shares its scale notes with the natural minor scale.

While the two scales share notes, the use and overall sound of the minor pentatonic scale is quite different from the natural minor scale. The examples below show the A natural minor scale and A minor pentatonic scale.

A Natural Minor Scale (click to enlarge)

Listen to the A Natural Minor Scale
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