Hearing the intervals

[littletune]

I have a few questions about this...

At music theory we were listening to intervals (only minor, major second and minor, major third) and I had really a lot of mistakes  And I don't have problems with dictations anymore so I don't understand how can I hear all the notes in the dictation right but I can't hear the interval between just two notes right 
We were listening to 26 intervals and I had ...  10 mistakes!!!    So it was really bad! (even though I would have only 8 mistakes cause I changed what I wrote first but didn't change it completely so the teacher counted the first thing I wrote).
But well yesterday when I was looking at the notes and intervals that we were listening to again, I noticed something weird. Out of all 10 mistakes that I had, 5 of the intervals that I got wrong started on the same note, and one more ended on that note and that was the note g # (or a flat). Can that be just a coincidence? Or do I have problem hearing the intervals with that note?  Or could the piano be so out of tune on that note?  (which would be kinda weird right?)

And I also noticed that sometimes I hear the intervals really well, but then sometimes I just get confused and I just think that it's a major third when it's really a minor and the other way around.
Is it ok if I practice this on my keyboard (pressing the keys and looking away) or would it be better to record it and then listen to it... or would it be better to play the intervals on my piano (which is out of tune) to get used to a little out of tune intervals or something? 

Well if anyone has any suggestions or anything else that would be great (cause I'm a little confused about all this) ! 

[oxy60]

As one approach I would try to sing different intervals. Play a fourth (ex, C-F upward then F-C downward. Try to sing (hum) the interval quietly. The reason I would start with the fourth is that it is heard and sung easier. Then you can progress to the fifth and octave. At a certain point after you've got the fourth, fifth and octave down, start using a a center note (C) then go up a fourth to F and down a fourth to G. Same with a fifth up and down from a center note.

When you get this down ask me again and I can give you the rest of the exercises.

I know a lot of people believe in do, re, mi, but stay away from it. You won't be helped by using it. And when you get to a higher level it will only confuse matters.

[ongaku_oniko]

what people in canada do is, you try to sing a song from the first two notes.

like minor 3rd would be the start of "Oh Canada!" (Canada's national anthem)
perfect 4th would be the wedding song
perfect 5th would be star wars
perfect octave would be Somewhere over the rainbow


etc

and you do the same thing when it goes downwards. I'm not sure how much this helps musically, but it helps TONS for recognizing intervals for exams.

[littletune]

Thank you Oxy for your advice! Yes I think singing is a very good idea! I will let you know how it goes

Thank you Ongaku Oniko! Yes we have some songs too... but the problem is I don't know them that well and then I get confused and start mixing them up...  maybe I should sing those songs too and learn them well, maybe that would help too.   

Well so I'll try singing more now.    Thank you both for your answers! 
(But I still really wanna know what's with that G# tone!) 

[thinkgreenlovepiano]

what people in canada do is, you try to sing a song from the first two notes.

like minor 3rd would be the start of "Oh Canada!" (Canada's national anthem)
perfect 4th would be the wedding song
perfect 5th would be star wars
perfect octave would be Somewhere over the rainbow


etc

and you do the same thing when it goes downwards. I'm not sure how much this helps musically, but it helps TONS for recognizing intervals for exams.

I do this too! If you pick really popular songs, then it'll be less confusing. For the less common intervals that are harder to remember, I try to find the interval in the pieces I'm learning, and whenever I practise the piece, I sing the interval when its being played.

I'm not sure if oxy60 already said this, but I play one note on the piano, and then I try to sing a note above or below it to form a certain interval.

For me, sometimes sharps and flats in general just confuse me for intervals. The note could sound a semitone lower or higher to me =/ For example sometimes a G flat sounds like a G and sometimes it sounds like an A...

[raisinbrahms]

(But I still really wanna know what's with that G# tone!) 

Hi littletune,

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but there has been an ongoing study at the University of San Francisco about perfect pitch.  It seems that most of the errors that were made by perfect-pitch possessors were around g#, with it frequently being mistaken for A.  They think it might have to do with A being a universal tuning frequency, and that people tend to put nearby tones into the A category.  You can read a little about that here:  https://siricarpenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Perfect-yet-Imperfect1.pdf

Sounds like most of your errors were within a half step, correct? 

And yes, with intervals, practice, practice, practice (ugh, I know!)  There are some free online programs too that you can quiz yourself with.  Those might help.  Good luck!

[oxy60]

Let me just quickly add to not get too involved with singing out loud, but rather humming quietly, just to yourself. Maybe so quietly you need to put a finger in your ear to hear yourself.

When you sing out loud certain other factors come into play which will change the pitch you produce. That is where the mistakes come in. Often popular singers fall into this trap because they never learned how to produce a vowel in the same pitch they were singing.

Regarding that study at SF State, is another example of scientists poking around in the music department. A at 440 has NOT been universal forever. It has been higher and lower, mostly lower. I had to buy a special part for my old clarinet from the 1920's to get it up to pitch to play in a band in the 1950's.

The other aspect of that study about the G# misses the fact that around that point is where some voices change registers. It is natural for mistakes to occur.

[littletune]

Thanks for the reply Thinkgreenlovepiano!

Hi Raisinbrahms!  Thank you That's really interesting! Yes most of my errors were within half step I think, so that's really funny!  And I'm really interested in how the brain works and things like that! So that's really cool!  Thanks! 

Oh Oxy, for me it sure couldn't be that about the A, because I have never learned about the pitch of the A... but maybe it could be something else, if so many people have problems with that... maybe it's something about that frequency  because a lot of times the G note rings kinda funny in my head so I usually know those notes around the g, so maybe it's something funny about that frequency   

And oh today I was A LOT better at hearing the right intervals!!      and yes I did sing really quietly different intervals (just for a few minutes) yesterday before I went to sleep and today before my music theory lesson. And today I only had one mistake out of 25 intervals!!  I'm really happy about it!!!    (I hope I wasn't just lucky!)

[prometheus]

The trick is to listen to the intervals in the right way. How to do this is hard to explain. The brain is very susceptible in making a 'fallacy' and deciding an interval is bigger because the two notes were higher than the earlier ones.

The main technique is to use intervals from well known songs. As a perfect 4th I use the bridal chorus from Wagner. Descending major third I relate to the popular doorbell sound. I must be a heretic for not relating it to Beethoven's 5th symphony.

https://www.people.vcu.edu/~bhammel/theory/resources/macgamut_theory/songs_interval_recognize.html

[littletune]

The trick is to listen to the intervals in the right way. How to do this is hard to explain. The brain is very susceptible in making a 'fallacy' and deciding an interval is bigger because the two notes were higher than the earlier ones.

The main technique is to use intervals from well known songs. As a perfect 4th I use the bridal chorus from Wagner. Descending major third I relate to the popular doorbell sound. I must be a heretic for not relating it to Beethoven's 5th symphony.

https://www.people.vcu.edu/~bhammel/theory/resources/macgamut_theory/songs_interval_recognize.html

Thanks! That's great! That's really a lot of songs for all the intervals! Thank you! 

[Bob]

After going through all that, I heard things in relation to the tonal center.  I usually has a key -- and I think my mind sticks on in even if tonality hasn't been established (with a V I progression).  So if I hear two notes, I think my brain puts it into a key (based on whatever it bases it on... last thing I heard, a snippet of a melody it reminds me of, etc.). 

Watch out for relating intervals to a certain melody.  That puts it in a key.  For ex., if you hear a m7 interval as the first notes of "There's a Place for Us" then you're hearing that m7 as part of a dominant seventh chord, as sol-fa.  It can get you through a test, but it might be a problem if you have a piece with re-do as a m7 -- i.e. It might not sound like what you think a m7 sounds like. 

Which makes me think there's a certain color to an interval on each step of the scale -- m7 built on do, m7 built on di, m7 built on re, etc.  But that's too much for an ear training test -- Just use the typical songs to learn the intervals faster.

[littletune]

Thank you for the comment Bob!  Well I think that is still a little too complicated for me I mean we won't have things like that in a test for sure... (and we haven't been listening to m7 intervals yet) but I will remember it for later! But I think it does sound different if it's on different tones! that's why I get confused sometimes... Well we'll see how it goes  Thanks! 

[Bob]

That would mean....

m2
M2
m3
M3
P4
TT
P5
m6
M6
m7
M7
8ve

... There are twelve intervals essentially....

do
di
re
di
mi
fa
fi
sol
si
la
li
ti

.. and twelve pitchest possible in a scale.

Or 144 different interval colors. 


Except I think it might even get more complicated.  Maybe it's not just the interval -- Maybe it's really the sound of the chord you hear too.  So for a "There's a Place for Us" Sol-Fa m7 interval, maybe it's really a dominant seventh chord you're hearing and not just that m7 interval?  Which means you'd probably have to add all kinds of chords to the above 144 interval color combos....

And then there's voicing (of the cords)....

Register....

Instrumentation...

Movement of those tones to whatever comes next and whatever came before....

And that all explains why music can sound so different, even when it's really just using the same 12 pitches all the time.  And that's just in terms of pitch too, not rhythm.

[Bob]

The intervals from melodies you know method works for ear training tests.

And you can very, very quietly "air whistle" to yourself.  As long as no one else can hear it it won't really matter (and there's a grey area of actually air whistling and just thinking it in your head). 

It can help if you think up or down a scale or piece of a scale.  If you can build do-re-mi-fa-sol up or down, major or minor, and sol-la-ti-do or do-te-le-sol, and then chromatic stuff (do-di-re-ri-mi, etc.) that can be a helpful little tool for those kinds of tests.

Actually I think those 'intervals out of the blue' type of tests are probably more difficult than the simple diatonic melodies they start off with in ear training. 

They do sell software that will do those tests.  I bet there are website that do the same thing.  And some of the spammers on this site probably have sites like that too.

[oxy60]

Hey Bob, I know this is a little off topic, but how did you get so knowledgeable in the do re mi thing? Over in Europe they are big on it, even naming replacement strings based on a fixed do=C. Here in the US I've only encountered a few supporters teaching classrooms in grade school. Even pop/blues bands call the notes/chords by name and the sequence in numbers, 1, 5, 4, 1.

[Bob]

College ear training classes.

I've heard about a few elementary schools but never seen them.  Those places would have to have all their stuff together to get that far, assuming they do a decent job teaching solfege.  I've heard of many high schools teaching solfege.  Choirs need it for sight-singing.

We did the typical stuff in college.  Different colors for intervals on each step of the scale I thought up.  I didn't think what I was told was the whole story.  I'm still not sure what's what exactly.  But it does seem to explain some things, why things sound different sometimes.

[oxy60]

I don't understand how it helps. It seems to add a layer of names for the notes on the page.
If you need to sing something that shifts tonality, then you will also need to shift the do. At some point mi would equal the new do. Renaming things that have a name already seems rather complicated. That is why I advised littletune to stay away from it.

[Bob]

Yeah, it's the pros and cons of movable and fixed do.  They happened to teach movable do so that's what I learned.

Numbers work fine too I've heard.  It's all the same idea.

[littletune]

Wow you really know a lot about all this Bob!

[Bob]

I know what I would do better the next time around.

[m1469]

Hi Littletune,

I don't have any real concrete answers to your questions at this point.  I'm still working on different aspects of this myself.  Something, though, that I've been recently doing with my pieces is analyzing the intervals wherever I can, both horizontally and vertically.  It's been enough years now to call it a "long time" since I've been in an aural skills class, and at this point I'm not sure I even remember exactly how I did.  I mean, I think I got by and did OK, but there was always something fuzzy to me about it all, as though I were doing what I needed to do to pass a class, and not as though it were really all resonating with me in the ways I intuitively felt it should be (or perhaps remember it as when I was a child).

Anyway, once I go ahead and analyze my intervals, I will sing them and/or play them, making a special piont to feel the distance between the notes in my body as I move.  It is all starting to resonate with me now.  Unfortunately, that's the only way I could really describe what I am doing and probably isn't all that useful to you, but I guess the point is that it's finally going beyond just trying to remember the sound ... it's taking on a whole character.  And, even though I am still just at the beginning of realizing what I think I am working on, there is already something obvious to me about the fact that the character even between the same interval is different in various places on the piano.  As in, I don't believe in "generic" intervals, exactly, as I think there is something about it all that is more individual than that.

Speaking of which, I need to get my piano tuned.  But, do you know what?  Even when I get it tuned, it sounds out of tune to me!  And, also, just today, even my digital sounded out of tune to me!  Ick.  Ick.  Sometimes my ears are just never satisfied with these tunings ...  

[oxy60]

Your digital should sound out of tune. You will never get a perfect fifth. Your octaves should be OK. It's the nature of a tempered scale.

If you are looking for perfect intervals, better try a different instrument. For those of us who played brass or strings we must just put up with the sound of a tempered scale.

[Bob]

M10ths usually sound pretty bad.

[littletune]

Hi m1469! Thank you for your comment!
Well actually lately I started thinking a lot about intervals of the pieces I'm playing too  And probably I'm not thinking about them the same as you but I imagine different things about them too.
And well the minor intervals usually make me feel as if they're a little tired, or sad or something, or crawling  I don't know... I have to think about them a little more...  I will now, during the holidays! (because I have to practice! because we don't have music theory for 3 weeks!).
Oh and they don't all sound the same to me either. 
Oh and I thought piano is supposed to sound just a little bit out of tune 
Oh and I made a test on the internet about what's the smallest difference in tones I can hear... like you have to say if a tone goes up or down or stays the same... and you have a test for 50c (is that a quarter tone?  ) well and for 20c and for 10c and 5c and also for 2 and 1. But those I can't hear anymore... I can hear 50 and 20 and 10 really well... like I get 10 out of 10 right right away... but then I needed a lot of time to get the ones with 5c difference right (I had to concentrate really a lot and listen to them A LOT of times) and then 2 and 1 I just couldn't get right anymore. How much are people supposed to hear? 

Well thanks everyone for the comments!

[Bob]

50 cents is a quarter tone, yes.  That sounds weird at first, but yes.  100 cents per difference in notes.  Or per half-step.  A whole step would be 200 cents then.

I heard somewhere about the least difference a human was capable of hearing between two pitches.  It must have been melodic intervals for this.  I think it was 3 cents or 5 cents.  I'm not quite sure.  If they were sounded at the same time I would think it's a lot of more obvious.