You've Been Learning Intervals The Wrong Way
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- Опубліковано 26 жов 2023
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Intervals are not shallow. Learn them more fully with this brand new exercise of mine!
This is great. Only a couple of minutes in and I immediately recognise this problem - none of the five different major seconds in a major scale sound the same to me and all have a different feel, so Frère Jacques is useless for ‘hearing the other four, etc etc with every other interval! Thank you! Time someone said it.
Ah, is that what I'm supposed to be noticing. Yeah, they sure don't sound the same. That I did notice. I guess I wasn't watching, but only listening and it just felt like a spooky where the hell are we going kinda thing. I should probably pick up the instrument to key into the key and then also sing the intervals, as she stated at the beginning. Just thought I'd give it a listen through, first, as I have to pack some boxes right now.
I want to say that I know my use of the word “wrong” is a bit (if not a lot) harsh. I know there is much good in any method or idea that promotes any level of musical understanding. I just couldn’t think of a better title that would still get peoples’ attention. Forgive me. ❤ Also I fixed two mistakes I found in the pdf. There’s an F7b5 that should’ve been notated as #5
Alternative suggestions: "You haven't been learning intervals the best way" or "the best way to learn intervals"
@@IAmLookingForwardToDeathno, “you’ve been doing X wrong” is a far better title for generating clicks. Tried and true.
That’s not a dig at all btw, I personally think it’s warranted in this case. I have a strong dislike for the familiar-songs method for having been an utter waste of my time and I think more people should be warned of its problems.
Aimee, you are spectacular!
So smart , funny,
And the way you explain things is so clear and practical.
You just get it.
Thank you !!
We forgive you! We forgive you!
My exact thoughts on the title of this episode. 😎🤓
This is amazing Aimee! Great paradigm for intervals and useful for composition and improv ideas. Thank you for this.
Hey Aimee I want to come out of the woodwork to say your stuff has helped me grow as an improviser and piano teacher since I discovered your channel 3-4 years ago. I’ll definitely be adapting this for my intermediate students.
This is pretty revolutionary! It not only exercises the intervals but their function in within the chords. I'm hearing lots of sounds I recognize and some I would have been able to identity but some others I would not have. Looking forward to making this a part of my regular practice!
Thank you, what you say makes a lot of sense to me. I was taught intervals using popular songs quite a few years ago - it didn't seem quite right but I followed along. When I listened to you singing the exercise in this video the feeling of each interval becomes much more clear, it's actually quite an eye opener for me.
I was blown away by how intuitive this exercise is!
I consider myself somebody who needs a lot of work when it comes to my ears, and I definitely consider myself to be somebody who can't sight-read.
But with this exercise, things just felt right. I might not always have had the vocal range to sing it, but I usually knew what needed to be sang.
Great exercise! And to all the commenters defending the 'familiar melody' method and giving Aimee a hard time for this video: when I was in music school, there was a significant skill gap between the jazz students and the classical students when it came time for our dictation exams, particularly once we were dictating atonal melodies. I think this was because the jazz students had already spent years exposing themselves to different intervals in a wide variety of contexts, so they had a larger 'toolkit' for recognizing various intervals and didn't have to do an extra step in their head of trying to re-contextualize each note as the root note of its own key in order to identify the note that came after. I don't think this makes the 'familiar melody' method outright wrong, as it likely provides an accessible first step for many students to begin learning intervals, but in my anecdotal experience it certainly had limitations, and I think my classically trained peers who managed to overcome their initial struggles in this area did so through a lot of practice and exposure, which is exactly what Aimee is trying to help with here.
Thanks for that. Nailed it. (And I tested out of dictation every semester…for precisely those reasons)
I have a master's degree in music theory. I don't know any professional jazz player who can't take dictation better than I can. Way better. I'm a classical player who backed into getting a master's in theory when I was doing a doctorate in performance.
Two things I've tried to shore up in the past five years or so. My piano skills, and my ear training.
This is a great way to learn your intervals. Thank you, Aimee! I love and appreciate all your videos.
curious about what you learn in a masters in theory@@mbustube1 I've been through undergrad theory, basic harmony through some 20th century stuff like tone rows, etc. What's in a theory masters?
I think the song method is okay as an intro, but yeah it doesn't solve the context issue at all. Unfortunately, I couldn't make sense of this exercise, at all. I know I'm not great at intervals in context, but now I feel I'm even worse than I thought. I'll get over it. :)
I've been concentrating on chord progressions and transitions lately, using 1/2 diminished and augmented chords to concentrate on tension and relax. So I've been filling in weak points in my grasp of theory. Had I not been doing that, there's no way I could have followed this. It's a great exercise. But it's for experienced musicians. The only "context" is that of practicing scales. Context for most people is a song. Hence the familiar melody method, which might change the feel of things, but for an intermediate musician give them a chance to hear how the feel of a melody changes in different keys, hence an understanding of the feel/mood of the different keys. Maybe a two minute explanation (ie teaching) of what you're doing instead of 5 minutes of bashing the old technique ("so we'll go through it" isn't teaching).
Aimee you are a Genius! Bravo! This is extraordinarily effective! Liberating and expanding the framework immensely!
THIS! This right here! Thank you for the thought work and presentation follow-through sharing this with us!
Great content Aimee!! It was also really pleasing to listen to you performing it :)
You’re a great teacher 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼💚
I really enjoyed listening to that presentation. I love the sound of you singing the intervals with the chords. I'm going to have to try this
You saved my ear traning program,the interval in different content really bother me for a long time,and I didn't see anyone do the exsercise differently.Now here you are,thank you Aimee!
Dear Aimee, I didn’t have the chance to go to a music school so I would not argue about whatever ear training method is best. My point is that I had a lot a fun with your exercise and it triggered a spark in my brain about what sound is really a minor second in different context. Thank you so much for your help!
Aimee you always bring a fresh prospect!! Thanks
This is a subject I’ve recently figured out is extremely important but very rarely seen discussed, so thanks for this! Context is everything, and I noticed you even had some light struggles with some p4 intervals that otherwise seem so easy. I have a good ear, but I keep hitting bad notes (or at least other notes than those I have in mind), and the main reason is that I’m not at all used to thinking how the intervals sound in context. So this exercise is very welcome. I’m a typical amateur guitar and bass player who plays mainly by ear and can’t read notes (in practice). While thinking in scale degrees is a good alternative approach well worth studying, thinking in intervals makes a lot of sense on guitar and bass while playing melodies, given how the notes are arranged on the fretboard.
This is fantastic! Great exercise and a wonderful way to compose. 5 star 🌟 episode. Thanks. 😎🤓
Hi Aimee! Been a fan of your stuff for a while. This exercise is super cool! As a violin teacher and music teacher for a while now, I’ve been trying to expand my harmonic understanding, and I’m somewhat torn.
After having studied a bunch of Edwin Gordon’s music learning theory, a lot of the pedagogy there encourages the singing voice as the main pathway to audiational understanding. I’ve also struggled with it because harmony in a way is taking multiple sounds at once and understanding how they fit together; my problem is often that I usually struggle when I try to understand more than one thing at a time!
My solution for this in classical violin pieces with double stops has been to learn/focus on one line at a time, then work on the technical issues that produces, then work on the balance of those voices, etc.
For classical piano pieces, I would often either take a similar approach or (more often) approach pieces by learning them in a “learning by rote” style. Often this would be way more playing by memorized feeling, usually only audiating the melody or whatever part I would focus on in that particular moment.
I’ve been trying (with not too much direction or organization) to work on things on the keyboard from more of a vocal perspective, but I think the reason I get stuck is because I might have a like harmonic aphantasia? Like it’s much easier for me to audiate clearly a single pitch at a time. For example, if you were to play an interval I could isolate those two pitches, and audiate one and then another. But for me to imagine two pitches at the same time? My audiation isn’t supporting that at the moment.
This exercise encourages me because woah, even though I don’t have the technical facility to be able to play all those chords on the piano (yet, I hope to some day, would love lessons with you to try to figure out some kind of path of what to do next) I can maybe just start by trying to do one interval at a time?
Thanks for reading this brain vomit if you did! And thank you for being and doing you! And thank you for the video! Much love!
This is amazingly beautiful and wonderful music just for listening and enjoying.
Thanks Aimee, I was crashing my head against this non universal interval behavior for some time. I fully agree with your observation. I would also suggest to sing roots, to deeply connect each interval to the chord.
Thanks for this resource Aimee. Context is everything! I also urge people to learn how different scale degrees sound in the context of a key (or chord). For me, that's the golden ticket of ear training.
Absolutely. Even though I learned movable Do solfege very late in life (70!), I have for some reason found that it’s often easier to sing a pitch accurately simply by identifying it’s solfege name than by singing interval to interval. They are separate and equally valuable skills.
What’s interesting is that I find it easier to sing/hear, for example, “le” than “b6”.
Hi Aimee. I learned my intervals a hundred years ago in the "wrong way" by connecting them with songs. No harm done. I can now locate them within harmony whenever I choose. The important thing is to hear the interval from any base note, up and down.
Me too
Yes, that is the important thing, but the song method doesn't really teach you that important thing, exposure does. It's not that the song method is "wrong", but that it has limitations and is only good when starting out.
Such a beautiful meditation ! Merci beaucoup...
Made it through the entire exercise. Damn, that was fun! I am definitely going to do a lot more sight singing after this. Thanks so much, Aimee. 🙏🏿🦁☀️
Great video, Aimee - once again, your teaching skills are terrific. Your video also reminded me how grateful I'll always be to the piano teacher I had as an adolescent, because she made music theory & harmony an integral part of each weekly lesson. Those lessons really stuck and helped me in the years to come. Also, your video reminded me of when I first fell in love with P5s and P4s as young kid when I heard a track called "Pandan" from my parents' Les Baxter album called "Tamboo!" I used to listen to it over and over again. :-)
What a *very* precise sense of pitch. Really dialed in to the center of all the notes at once.
This was such an entertaining romp - thank you! Oh AND, it was really thought provoking!
This is brilliant and beautiful. No matter what one says, besides intervals alone, intervals in different harmonic conexts is the most general and most varied presentation possible. Associating an interval with Star Wars is not something one should live with. 😊
Really really helpful exercise,I did it for a month and I feel big big progress in interval/melody recognition.You're a great teacher,I even feel a little sad for knowing this tranning thread this late in my music journey😂
this is brilliant!
This was a wild experience, I somehow NEVER thought about what actually stays constant in an interval and haven’t heard them in this way, plus I think having my airpods in messed with my pitch a lot so i removed them
also your voice is soothing frfr
😂😂😂
Aimee! That intro.
Shots fired..??
Haha no, just something interesting noticed 🙌🏼
This is the most beautiful musical exercise I've heard
I think the "inteval songs" are fine for beginners who just want to get familiar with the basic sounds of the intervals. But that's really the only thing they should be used for, because they really aren't useful in an actual musical context. But they do introduce the sounds of the different intervals in an easily accessible way to beginners, and I do think that's also valuable. It's just that that's not the only thing people should know about intervals.
My own thinking is more based on scale degrees/chord tones any way. Like, if I had to sing those tritones, it would be much easier for me to think "oh, that's a leap from the 3rd to the 6th of a m6 chord" or "that's a leap from the 7th to the 3rd of a dominant chord" than "that's a tritone". Thinking in intervals without relating it to any kind of a tonal context is not that useful in most cases IMO. Or at least that's a pretty advanced technique, and I think familiarizing yourself with scale degrees and chord tones is much more useful, at least at first. Only after that, learning a more "atonal" approach to hearing intervals makes sense IMO.
But yeah, this is a cool exercise, and it also sounds nice. Some nice melodies here.
I have no musical background or training and am trying to learn how to play the flute (by ear). I have been working on training my ear. There are apps that use intervals which I spent a lot of time on. I also used an app that used scale degrees--it was surprisingly easy but makes no sense--perceiving the personality of the note in the context of the key. It plays I, IV, V, I and then gives you a note. I wonder how well this would work for minor keys or if you were given different chords to prime the question.
@@jacko.6625 _"I wonder how well this would work for minor keys or if you were given different chords to prime the question."_
Works the same way in minor (remember that the first degree of minor is still called 1, even though the relative minor is the 6th note of major - it's better to think of minor as 1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7 in relation to major). It plays I IV V I, because that's the simplest way of establishing a key. If it was in minor, it would most likely play i iv V i (Am Dm E Am in A minor). But it could play something else too - as long as it establishes the key, it doesn't really matter what it is.
When you play music that is in a key, you will hear the tonal center as the most stable note of the key - the note that you want to return to in the end of the song to make it sound final. The tonal center is what gives the other notes their character. This is where (harmonic) tension and release also come from.
Now, learning to hear random scale degrees out of context isn't really the most musical exercise either. You could also familiarize yourself with the sound of the scale degrees in a more "musical" way.
Remember that not all scale degrees are "equal". There are scale degrees that sound more stable, and there are scale degrees that have a clearer direction. The notes in the tonic triad are all quite stable (though the tonal center is obviously the most stable note). The rest of the notes have a tendency to resolve to the nearest note in the tonic triad.
7 resolves up to 1.
6 resolves down to 5.
4 resolves down to 3.
2 resolves down to 1.
You can practice hearing these characteristics by singing the tonic triad, then singing one of these "tensions", and then resolving it back to the tonic triad. Stay on the tension for a longer time, and you'll hear this direction (and the feeling of resolution) quite clearly.
1 3 5 1 7....... 1
1 3 5 6....... 5
1 3 5 4........ 3
1 3 5 3 2....... 1
In minor, it works the same way, but you need to remember to add the leading tone.
1 b3 5 1 7........ 1
1 b3 5 b6........ 5
1 b3 5 4......... b3
1 b3 5 b3 2......... 1
@@jacko.6625The chord cadence is supposed to give you the tonic of the key and then you reference the unknown notes to the tonic.
@@MaggaraMarinethat is so helpful, thank you!
Fantastic exercise and very musical for those of us who sight sing this is loadsa fun
Thank you for this! !
Great idea, Amy! I've played around with this exercise and have developed a variant that I find even better. Instead of playing one chord and playing different e.g major seconds I always play the same two notes and change the chord underneath. Let's give me an example: I play the notes c and d. I start with a C major chord underneath. Then c and d are 1 and 2. Then I play Bb major -> 2 and 3, then F major -> 5 and 6, then Eb major -> 6 and 7, than C minor -> 1 and 2, an so on. For me this works even better than Amy's original exercise, since I hear the same two notes in different context.
you have a great touch on the piano
The ridiculous arguments I've gotten into over ear-training using stem from this "learn the song" interval training. Charlie Banacos was a famous music teacher out of Boston who used to teach musicianship via contextual ear training--hearing within the context of key centers and chordal colors INSTEAD of naked intervals. I studied with one of his disciples--Banacos was a force of nature--and I still used Contextual Ear Training to tune my ears. I knew that you'd circle around to talking about CET sooner or later, and I'm glad that you're hipping everyone to another way ;)
Thanks for the tip!
Wow. Wish I had learned music from you 50 years ago. 😂 Now I’m just here for singing ASMR. Never knew intervals could be so beautiful. Thank you. ❤
Thanks! That was a great tour. A little too tough for me at my level but beneficial to listen.
This is pure genius! What a great idea.
Thanks so much!
Hi Aimee, I am a guitar instructor (27+ years in Orlando); and I am always on the search for new, interesting material that I can introduce to my more "experienced" students. This is fantastic study material! I think that it could also be incredibly helpful in the applications of studying improvisation. Thanks for the great video lesson, Dave
Love this!!
I think this is for people who already trained their ears well. It's a way to hear more colors in chords and be able to use them in our improvisations. I don't think it should be opposed to the "standard" way of learning intervals. I also started learning intervals using song references. After a few months, the reference disappeared and I can now instantly know what interval it is. This skill was a very useful foundation to start to learn hamony with triads and also to read notes on a staff and be able to hear the notes in my head, so it improved my sightreading skills, and I also use that skill to write notes easily (very useful if you are a composer working on harmonic and melodic details).
For chords, I trained my ear to hear the differences in the various 7th chords quality, then I added the 9th, then the 11th. Using apps for that training is very useful. So know I can play a single note and sing any type of complex chords. When I improvise, I can choose the color I want.
I think your exercise is great to really grasp all intervals color for a specific context. But that's already an advanced ear training level I think. Beginners starting singing 11th without even hearing basic intervals will probably be lost and lose confidence quickly.
But you can save time by learning it in context of actual keys from the very beginning. It is still more efficient. Not for just people who trained their ears well. They trained their ears well faster by doing this from the start.
@@Proghead88 I think that's a misconception, it's as if you said "train your 7th chords so that you can save time on your triads". The truth is that by learning the triads well, you can picture each notes well, and then it becomes easy to just add the 7th. While if you start from scratch, a beginner has to focus on 4 notes at the same time, much harder than 3, and they can't say which note is the 3rd or 5th instantly. The same: learn all scales right from the beginning, when you don't even know where the middle C is on the keyboard.
Even Aimee eventually said this exercise is rather for advanced learners somewhere in the comments below. So what people disagreed with was "wrong way" in the title. Learning individual intervals and learning intervals in context are two different skills and both have their benefits. For playing jazz, training in the context will probably be the most important, but if we can't even sing a Do-Mi interval, I doubt we can sing Do-Sol# and clearly hear it in our head to be able to play it instinctively in an improvisation. For composers who work on staves and need to deal with orchestral harmony or counterpoint, simple intervals let you easily read, write and hear the notes on a sheet music.
So that's the "wrong way" that sounded more like a clickbait to some people here. If I told one of my students to start training ears with this exercise, they'd be quickly disheartened because everything would just be so complex and abstract that they never feel they can ever progress.
Again, I don't agree here because of the complexity of this exercise. If we make this exercise proposed here adapted for beginners, that's what is called functional ear training, identifying a note based on the tonal context. But that is nothing revolutionary, Aimee should just call an apple an apple, we all practiced individual intervals and functional tonal intervals. Again, they both have advantages, they are just not the same skills.
@@MFJMD564 it's not like training 7th chords to identify triads. It's just learning to identify the individual components of chords to actually learn how melodies and chords work together from scratch. It is easy to teach if you start with 2 notes at a time and teach basic songs everybody knows in the actual context they were supposed to be heard in. Happy Birthday (sing up to the 5th to start the melody and learn about 5ths and 6ths, octaves and 7ths), Mary Had a Little Lamb (sing up to the 3rd to start the melody and learn about 2nds and 5ths as well), etc... you can learn so much in such a short time by actually teaching how a major scale works. Most people don't write or listen to music in isolated intervals so why teach that way? You're misunderstanding what I said and complicating it. It's not complex or abstract. Teach your students about major scales and how melodies/chords relate from the beginning and you'll be a lot closer to how music is actually heard and how theory is used. I've taught almost 2000 students but it doesn't matter because my advice should be hopefully clear enough by now regardless of quantifying or comparing experience.
Yeah, there is no "wrong way" but there is a more efficient way and it is so efficient that giving this video a strong title is actually very important.
You’re a gift.
Great video! I totally agree that learning melodies that give me, say, I, V, I in a major key (like Elvis Presley's 'Wise men say... ') don't really help me find those intervals on different degrees of the scale, especially if they're in a minor key, in this case, since my model is in the major. With regards to your comments on Taylor Swift, I've been noticing generally, for some time, that popular songs from the last twenty years or so tend to do that thing, which your not allowed to do in classical harmony exercises, which is: to go deliberately 'in search of' the major 7th. In classical harmony a B in the melody over a C major usually happens because the B is suspended from a previous chord; there is preparation, then the major seventh and finally resolution, usually with the B moving up to the C. Pop music gets its charm and its kick by deliberately breaking these kinds of conventions. For that reason, the Taylor Swift phenomenon. All the examples you gave of Taylor Swift's descending fourths were III to VII usually over chord I major. It's this modern trend of deliberately going to the dissonant 7th just for the hell of it.
While i generally agree with you that melodic interval learning adds an extra step and maybe is harder at first but makes it easier later... I think your initial trip up only is an issue if you have perfect pitch to some degree or have really strong pitch memory.
I can flip flop context on a dime just about. So melodic interval learning let me perform amongst the best in the dictation classes; Eventually just after you perform& learn enough material the intervals aren't connected to songs but still. Melodic has its place, but I think it needs to be with the right type of person.
But ultimately, this exercise is FANTASTIC! Certainly can round out anyone's ability to sing (and hopefully recognize) certain intervals
Whew! Very interesting! The context issue--!! (I am Eager to work on this Huge(!!) exercise!)
Beautiful melody
You are completely right.When you get the interval from a song, you do not get only the interval, but the whole context coming with it, this method is meant to open the door of music to real beginners with no practice of instrument nor musical teaching , but I think it’s not harmful to learn that this interval from Star Wars is called a fifth. The trap is to get stucked at this point . you got to go further with the next step : functional ear training
Aimee says it doesn't help to think an interval for some known song when the current context is in a different key, but than she heart reacts to your for "real beginners with no practice of [an] instrument nor musical training .. not harmful to learn that this interval from Star Wars is called a fifth.
That seems to make this video poorly introduced. Apparently, this lesson is for someone at a particular (maybe not very far) advancement in their musical journey and she doesn't tell us this. Or maybe strangely they know ever term Aimee mentions about keys and steps and chords, but the student doesn't recognize a third.
Does it help me to think Star Wars or whatever? Yes it does, so even when asked to sing some interval in some key, going back to the bare interval is useful. What choir teacher hasn't stopped and said that first note to the second in that measure is a 4th, and had the singer sing it kee ... ka, kee ... ka and then added it all back together.
As a rank beginner, I have NO IDEA about this context of which she speaks is. Maybe I have intuitively learned some of this from singing for decades, but understanding the music context and her description of it and how that applies seem like an absurdity without being able to have some basic grasp of creating a bare interval from what is named or noted😥
How does it make any sense to talk with all of the musical terminology to a person who doesn't know a 3rd from a 4th?
I'm going to listen to the video, because I think it will help with what I think is called ear training, but I can assure all of you I have no idea what Aimee is sequencing through and why that would effect my learning.
Check my pinned comment at the top of all of the comments.
Great excercise
I was cycling to the station earlier today while "replaying" part of a song in my mind (Underworld - denver luna (acappella), beautiful stuff), and wondered what intervals the melody was made of by sort of reverse engineering it matching it to scales & melody fragments etc. Which triggered a thought process about what makes intervals sound like they do and how they can sound so different in a different context.
Then I arrive back home and see this video 😃 To me it can help sometimes though to recreate a common interval in my head, transposing it until it fits or how it differs. Can be anything though, for example most Dutch (ambulance, police, etc.) sirens are playing two notes a (just!) perfect fourth from each other. For me instantly reproducible because I hear a bit more than I'd wish for ;)
Great perspectives!
Thank You VERY MUCH
I can't believe you just give out game-changing information like this for free. Thank you!
Ehhh why not 😆🙌🏼🙏🏼
This is awesome, LOVE the connection between music theory and popular music and esp weird quirks of famous musicians like Taylor Swift. Fantastic observation.
Missing perfect fourth over dominant?
Really nice exercise for hearing/recognizing/producing an interval in differing harmonic contexts. Seems like a solid exercise for
building a crucial aural skill. I've not seen its like before. Thank you.
I have only recently started in earnest on making ear training an important part my studies...and absolutely loving it. And aas such will limit my comment here emphasize the absolute importance of this and that it takes effort and dedication to get results. And to Aimiee point, what use is it to spend hours to mechanically being to execute a piece of music when your ears and mind are not in sync with what you are playing? We are so obsessed with technical skills, tecnique should align with musicality.. it's about time we wake up and understand that...and yes it is a skill that can be learned.. for most probably harder then simply mastering mindless mechanical technical abilities...but do you want to be a musiciay or a jukebox? Aimie you are amazing..Thanks for your dedication, talent and taking the time to share your knowledge and insights.
awesome exercise
The Swift collage alone is worth the Like hier. Listening to all Swift songs so we don't have to :)
This is gold
This exercise is surprisingly beautiful and emotional haha.
One way i found helpful to train intervals is using an interval training app with some music / tv show / video (with music) playing in the background, it completely changes the context for the intervals
I love how she speaks with her eyes. 👍
@AimeeNolte I agree -- this is a very interesting approach, but definitely not for beginners -- it's much too complicated. I'm struggling with it a bit myself (an intermediate-level pianist and organist). I usually do well with dictation, and I "get it", but it's not something I could use with my beginning students. We usually start off just learning to identify any 2nd, any 3rd, the perfect 4th and 5th, any 6th, any 7th, and the octave, then go into distinguishing between the major and minor 3rds, 2nds, 7ths, and 6ths, and the aug 4th/dim 5th.
I take some exception with your statement at 1:54 -- "it only works as long as you're in that key". Every interval works in any key -- "My Bonnie" is always a major 6th (or, conversely, a major 6th is always "My Bonnie") no matter where (i.e. in or on which key) you start. The "My Bonnie" major 6th occurs 3 times in the key of C: C to A, D to B, and G to E. It is not restricted to the tonic - submediant sixth. "Oh Christmas Tree" / "Here Comes the Bride" -- a perfect fourth -- occurs 6 times in the key of C: C to F, D to G, E to A, G to C, A to D, and B to E -- it's not restricted to the tonic - subdominant 4th. Are intervals being taught only from the tonic?
However, I definitely agree that this exercise is beneficial for hearing the intervals in a wider variety of contexts than just the major and minor tonalities. And I agree that different people learn these using different cues. Using the voice to "unmask" the intervals within different contexts seems to work well.
Wow this is crazy. Saving for later.
4:42 how it feels to you - that’s key.
We often output music (compose, improvise) from feeling to note.
So we should input music from note to feeling.
Ditto chords, intervals, keys, etc.
Build your own lexicon of preferred sounds, identified FIRST by feeling.
Then name them by giving them a word or image or subtle memorable intent that you will always remember.
Later figure out what other people call them. Much later. Embed into your being your own flow and language first. Later figure out what other people call them so that you can communicate with others using a common language but do not let some established language, one that has nothing to do with how a sound may feel to you, be inserted. It interrupts flow. If you start with someone else’s language, translate it into your own, and back again then flow is gone.
It is an aural art form.
Keep it aural.
Don’t let your language brain diminish your natural aural brain’s validity. Instead, validate it, give it freedom to be.
One of the best exercises for ear training! I was able to pull off any diatonic(e.g., 4-7) or tonic(1 or do) based intervals(e.g. do-fi) easily. However, singing 2-5# was not as confident before practicing according modes/chords. Interval feels so different when it comes to context: 1-4# feels lydian, while 3b-6 feels dorian. There is no shortcut, you just gotta practice them all. I guess that's also the purpose of practicing scales/modes, focusing on the color note, and its relation to other notes, things are all connected...
Very interesting Aimee
Great stuff ! I'll make my own exercises from this interesting idea of re working on intervals with emphasis on the change of context ! :) However i do not feel like learning with songs is wrong, but more like it is one easy way to the very first step to start hearing things. I mean you might learn to make any color from the three primary colors you still don't know how to paint. Your suggestion is not a different way of learning it's simply the next step, i could never have done the exercise if i din't know my intervals already. I know them because i learned with songs. I learned with songs because i had to start somewhere. Then comes the practice to get to the point where the color of the interval becomes so familiar you dont need the song anymore. Context is everytghing in pedagogy too, and the context was different at the begining, if the teacher had shown your exercise instead of frere jacques (event though it is really good for more advanced students) he would have lost the entire class. And i don't think introducing a concept to people bringing in things they already know can ever be a mistake. But we need lots of different access points to the same information to trully master it. To sitck to the painting metaphor what you're telling me with this video title is "You've been learning to mix colors wrong because you should have done it by learning to use green in a landscape with morning light, green in a landscape at noon, green in an indoor still life painting, green in...". Yes i have to do all that if i want to learn how to paint but if i dont know you get green by mixing blue and yellow in the first place, its not gonna work, and i'm gonna be totally lost, it's too far ahead, too massive and too difficult at this stage of my learning.
Very good! You should make a continuation with the intervals happening between two chords.
Excellent upload. I wish more people would promote this approach. Thanks. Now, do you have any tips to stop my neighbour’s dog confusing my singing for a cat in distress?
I’ll start working on this right away
2:18 ... that does slightly help me hear Star Wars in that context, just by chance since the Star Wars theme is in Bb major! This is a brilliant exercise though, I tried singing along while watching and found it difficult in parts because some of them felt unfamiliar in those new contexts. Going to introduce this into my generally-noodling-around practice segment, thanks!
Hearing or practicing that half tone interval 'all over the place' is indeed a very useful exercise.
This makes a lot more sense than trying to relate intervals to some other melody, which method I find rather useless to apply to a song in a different key than the "interval reference song"
Ha!!! I've been thinking about this for decades but I've never heard an expert bring it up. Learning intervals by singing songs only teaches you one of the 12 possible interval sounds that each distance between 2 notes can produce!
Interesting approach. I’ve been able to hear intervals for as long as I’ve been playing piano - I started at 7 (I’m 69). You’re right about context. How I often do it is to ignore the interval itself and go with the interval of each note from One. This isn’t conscious on my part, it’s just how I think. So if I’m in C and I play an E, then the C above that, I’m not thinking minor 6th, I’m thinking 3rd to octave. For me to get minor 6th I’d have to stop and think about it, but for me to get 3rd to octave just happens.
Joni Mitchell's later music is very heavy on the minor second, which, when used well seems to me to be the most powerful interval (not that it matters, since it's really all about context). My favorite use of it is in Bach's first prelude in C from the Well-Tempered Clavier.
you sound wonderful
Finally someone said this! Thank you, Aimee. Interval-training is a fine thing to do, and it's great to know your intervals. But hearing actual music by intervals has very little utility in practice. I sight-sing in choirs at close to a professional level, and I never think about intervals (unless the piece is atonal). In 99% of situations, I'm just thinking about the scale degrees of each note in relation to the key or current chord.
The only downside to my method is that it requires being able to view the entire SATB+piano score and be able to parse the harmony in real time, as well as knowing what scale degree each note of your line is on.
Sorry, I know this sounds an awful lot like a humblebrag (or perhaps a normal brag). I don't mean it that way. My point is that singers hear harmony based on scale degree of the key and/or chord. This is fundamentally what singers do when they learn a song, even if they don't have the knowledge to name the scale degrees, keys, and chords-that's just how our ears work-at least for the vast majority of musical traditions out there.
My theory teacher had me sing all the intervals with associated repertoire starting on all random pitches. He had me play the starting pitch, then hear it in my head, and eventually do it with “resistance “. Say I’d decide on singing a P5 ascending…so I play a C. Then hear the P5 UP …a G in this case, then SING THE G SIMULTANEOUSLY WHILE PLAYING a chord that is dissonant to a G…say an F# Major chord. Then while holding the G note vocally…then change the chord to one that includes the G.
The late Dr. Asher Zlotnik.
Also had associated repertoire for all major and minor triads, ascending and descending.
Then he had his Pivot system on singing all chords.
Pretty cool.
Another impressive thing he had me do when practicing Ear training with vocalizing was to practice multiple sessions each day…with each session no longer than 6-8 minutes each. To avoid Ear Hearing Fatigue.
It really helped me.
Then later at Berklee…it all helped when I was Learning Solfege.
Some of your passages remind me of Harry Lubin's work.
Interesting stuff.
That was great!
I do piano tuning. 4th and 5ths are important but major 3rds and major 6ths really help you set the equal tempered scale. In tuning major 5ths and major 3rds are not perfect. 5ths are compressed and 3rds expanded from what you might think sounds "perfect" I passed an "intervals" ear test at school when I was 6 years old. I was the only kid in a class of 27 children who could "hear" intervals.
Hi Aimee!
Check this out:
These two melodies , "ooh-wee-ooh" and "my bonnie" have the same notes (in this case A, F♯, E), but they are in different keys (1 in A and 1 in D).
About the sheet: the chord symbol in m54 is a bar early, the interval in m59/60 is not a major third (you *sing* the b-flat though), the interval in m.76 is a fifth, not a fourth
Oddly musical for an exercise. I loved the perfect fourths over the diminished. And I must be crazy, but C+(#11+7) almost made me cry. Reminded me of something out of the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
perfect, i was looking for if there are any cons to learning it this way. I honestly just jumped right into online interval quizzes, without any existing idea or method to go about it. as i was practicing the intervals, i started to hear melodies of songs that i know that refer to that interval. however when that happened, i find that my brain tend to focus on the melody of the song, then interpret what is the right interval. however the notes that i have no song reference in my head, felt more natural to identify. that way i can identify the note in more meaningful way, which was the distance, emotion and impact of the interval by itself.
like, i think you’re right, it’s so limiting. but i can still hear these melodies out of their original context, it’s cool to hear them in different harmonic contexts
It's about hearing notes related to the tonal center. If I can hear the melody go from the second to the sixth, I know that's a perfect fifth, but that information is also kind of irrelevant because I already know what the notes are.
Major 6th makes Chopin Nocturne in E flat major come to mind. And minor 6th makes Waltz in C#minor come to mind. I just love Chopin!
I recognize those intervals in any key. Music can be transposed. Major 3rd makes Type O Negative song World Coming Down come to mind. I am also a metalhead.
Hi Aimee! I love this video, and have been working on understanding it on and off for a few weeks now.
My main question now is this: is there any particular way that I should play the chords on the piano? Different voicings, arpeggios, etc. What are you trying to emphasize when you play these chords?
Many thanks from Virginia!
Be as creative as you can! 🙌🏼🙌🏼
Love it. Thanks! :)@@AimeeNolte
Very awesome, very beautiful, and very helpful. Many lessons taught ONLY in the context of Cmaj can be counter-productive, especially for students with diverse aural perception skills. I believe in the major 3rd section, bar 11, you may have a minor 3rd over the Bbm7 chord???
I just checked and don’t see one but thanks for looking out
That sounded spooky 👻
Wow, you made me whistle along to a YT video. :)
The net result is some beautiful sounding music. Could you write out the accomplishment chord voicings that you are playing?
THANK YOU!!!!! I have such a hard time transferring melodies to different keys. Especially during an ear training exam, the melodies all go out the window. That’s what my professor uses to teach us, he says it like its easy and doesn’t understand why we can’t pick up on it. Especially when dictating melodies, how am I supposed to remember another melody in a different key, for some random interval in the 4th bar of an 8 bar dictation that we can only listen to 6 times? Thank you!!!
It's really all about gravity, and song interval learning to begin with is a good start. Since I have absolute pitch, it's easy for me
I think I know the reason for the "Taylor Swift effect" that you mention at the beginning. It's that when you hear the first two notes they don't sound like the 4-b7. They sound like the 5-1 in the key of the lower note. Then the mind trick that all these songs play is that they take you to a different key from the one you were hearing, in which it's the sequence 4-b7-1. I think that's why it sounds intriguing.
the minor second is a very country technique... often a sus 2 chord plays the minor ii interval then resolves to a Major I (non-sus) as a bend-note technique in southern rock and soul.