Intervals on the guitar

 

INTERVALS



 

Intervals are important in music and they are the basics for chord and scale construction. An interval is the difference in pitch between one note and another. Intervals can be either designated melodic or harmonic. A melodic interval is when notes are played in a melody (unsurprisingly lol), and harmonic intervals are notes that are played at the same time eg. a chord, double-stop, etc.

Ok, so what harmonic and melodic Intervals do I need to know?

Good question, thank you for that. I will endeavour to answer it, (mmm clears throat…)



Wow, that looks confusing.. This may be easier


Intervals are designated as either perfect (P), major (M) or minor (m). If you look at the fret diagram you can see that written above the sixth semitone is Ƅ5. Above that is the type of interval, in this particular case it is a A4/d5. This is an Augmented 4th or a Diminished 5th (sometimes called the Tri-Tone). All this means is the Perfect 4th note has been sharpened, or that the Perfect 5th note has been flattened in pitch. 
 
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How do they sound?

Ascending Intervals

P1 - Jingle Bells (same note)
m2 - Jaws Theme
M2 - Happy Birthday to You
m3 - Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin)
M3 - Oh When The Saints
P4 - Amazing Grace
Tri-Tone - Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath)
P5 - Blacbird (The Beatles)
m6 - The Entertainer (Scott Joplin)
M6 - My Way (Frank Sinatra)
m7 - The Winner Takes It All (ABBA)
M7 - Take On Me (A-Ha)
Octave - Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Wizard of Oz)


Descending Intervals

P1 - Candle In the Wind (Elton John)
m2 - Fly Me to the Moon (Frank Sinatra)
M2 - Eight Days a Week (The Beatles)
m3 - Hey Jude (The Beatles)
M3 - Swing Low Sweet Chariot
P4 - Oh Come All Ye Faithful
Tri-Tone - Even Flopw (Pearl Jam)
P5 - Flintstones Theme
m6 - Love Story Theme
M6 - Man In The Mirror - chorus (Michael Jackson)
m7 - Lady Jane - (Rolling Stones)
M7 - Immigrant Song -Vocal P1 - P0 - M7 (Led Zeppelin)
Octave - The Lonely Goatherd (The Sound Of Music)

There are a number of websites that give other examples of these intervals, perhaps you may find other songs with the interval notes more familiar to your taste. There is also helpful websites that help with ear training. This will hone this skill so you can quickly and easily find the interval you are looking for. As previously stated, playing one note and then another to pick out the interval is classed as 'melodic' intervals. When two notes are played together, this is a 'harmonic' interval.

Harmonic Intervals

When two notes are played together we get the sound of harmony. What is actually happening is that your ear is hearing the low note playing with the higher note and the resulting sound is harmony. You could say that you are hearing three differing sounds all at the same time.
   



Chords and Intervals

 As we are now aware, when we play notes together we are producing a harmonic interval. When these intervals are stacked together as on the diagram, we are playing a chord, there is a school of thought that says three notes must be played together to sound a chord. Technically, this is correct. However, on a guitar two notes played together is called a diad and there are many examples of this, All Right Now by Free has Paul Kossoff playing diads throughout the song, and it sounds great. What tends to happen is that a chord is implied without playing the full chord. Or, if you read the article contained within my blog about Paul Kossoff, chords may be left without a major or minor feel to them. A major chord would contain the ‘root’ note (first note of assocaiated chord) plus the major 3rd and the perfect 5th. A minor chord would contain the ‘root’ note plus the minor 3rd and the perfect 5th.  The reason a guitarist may play without a 3rd is so that the other musicians in the band can play around with the music without any restriction on playing in major, or minor keys. 



This shows that by placing your finger on the G# note, the E Minor chord is changed to a E Major chord. The note of G# is the major 3rd note in the scale of E major.


The E Major Scale







Brief Intro to Scales and Chord Construction

So, you can see that by stacking notes together harmonically* (see below), you will make chords. As previously explained, a major 3rd or minor 3rd note, (along with the root note and the perfect 5th note), has the effect of changing the chord from major to minor. There are two other chord types you must be aware of – these are Augmented (Aug) chords and Diminished (Dim) chords. It may be easier to see this on a piano keyboard as the notes can be seen easier with the combination of black and white keys.

C Major 1-3-5         C-E-G  

C Minor 1- Ƅ3-5      C-EƄ-G

C Aug    1-3 -#5       C-E-G#

C Dim    1- Ƅ3- Ƅ5    C-EƄ-GƄ 

One final short point is about ‘diatonic harmony’ and ‘modes’.  Diatonic harmony in music is produced by playing notes from the seven notes within a major or minor scale. So, again in the above example of a C major scale, a song using only the notes of this scale would be diatonic encompassing the notes of the C major scale.

Chords in diatonic harmony are generated from the major and minor scales by constructing triads on each of the diatonic scale degrees. Scale degrees and triads are identified by the same names, and triads may be represented by roman numerals. The seven names are (I) tonic, (II) supertonic, (III) mediant, (IV) subdominant, (V) dominant, (VI) submediant, and (VII) leading tone.

On each note in a major or minor scale we can build three-note chords, or triads by adding two more notes (on top of the "scale-note"); each an interval of a third apart:

 

*


Diatonic Harmony in a C major Scale

These chords are named Diatonic, since they are using the notes through [Dia-] the scale.

Chord progressions using notes not belonging in that scale, are instead called Chromatic Harmony.

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Please look out for another post where I will explain further about chord construction, modes, scales. This article hopefully will just whet your appetite and should be easy to digest...get it? appetite, easy to digest - oh, forget it. Anyway, as always, please subscribe, comment, squeeze your lemon and fall right out of bed..Cheers









 

 

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