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  • Hello everybody, it's Zack here.

  • I've been looking through the forums today and what I've noticed is that the idea of

  • looking at intervals and finding out what they are and how to fully describe them.

  • It's one of the areas that I think some people might benefit

  • from having some extra assistance with and some, some course of explanation.

  • So what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to flash up some

  • intervals on the screen, I'm going to talk through, roughly, the way that I would.

  • Approach working out what they are and describing them

  • and hopefully just that this, this will be useful for

  • some people because it will allow you to almost see

  • the process happen in action and watch it top through.

  • Now what I'm using here on the screen is

  • musictheory.net, I've just got to close up of the.

  • Application.

  • I would say check out this website because it is a fantastic one and

  • it'd be really useful for you practicing

  • some of the things that we're talking about.

  • So, as I said I'm just gona really quickly chat through a

  • few examples for you and give you some tips as we go.

  • Okay so first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to look

  • at the clef and I'm going to notice it's the base clef.

  • Which means that this lowest note here is a D.

  • Come up from our lowest note we get D, E, F, G.

  • One, two, three, four.

  • So this is a fourth of some description.

  • Now, what I always say to people.

  • Is to look at the lowest note and imagine that

  • you're in the major key of which this is the tonic.

  • So if you look at the lowest note here, we've got a D.

  • So what I want you to do is just imagine that you're in the key of D major.

  • So if you're in the key of D major, you'd expect

  • to find an F sharp and a C sharp and nothing else.

  • So in this case we've got a G.

  • We're looking for D to G-natural.

  • G would occur in the key of D-major.

  • Now, for what we're going to call this, a perfect fourth.

  • Let's click the button here and find out if we're right.

  • [SOUND] Correct.

  • Perfect fourths.

  • So the lowest note here we've got is D.

  • Again, just by coincidence.

  • So what we're going to do is we're going to carry up four.

  • One, two, three, four and the [INAUDIBLE] G.

  • Now this is just sheer coincidence that we're

  • getting a similar interval to the last one.

  • And in the last one you said it was D to G.

  • There were no other sharps and flats.

  • So therefore D to G was our perfect fouth.

  • Now we've got a D to a G, but this time it's G sharp.

  • So we've got D to G sharp.

  • Now, because this upper note's been sharpened.

  • It's make this note a semitone higher.

  • And what that serves to do is stretch them,

  • the gap's a bit bigger now between the bottom one.

  • And the top one.

  • So what we've got here actually is what looks like a perfect fourth, if

  • it was just D to G, but it's been made larger by one semitone.

  • So perfect if made larger by one semitone, just going to

  • click on augmented fourth here and see if we're right.

  • Okay, so this time what we're got in an A to an F.

  • Now, we do have an F sharp on the

  • key signature, but because we've got an F natural here.

  • This natural sign cancels out the sharp, so what we

  • can say is this is an A to an F.

  • Let's out it out numerically.

  • One, two, three, four, five, six.

  • An A to an F is a sixth of some description.

  • Now if we were in the key of A major, we

  • would expect to find an F sharp, C sharp and G sharp.

  • Right so if this was to be A to F sharp, what we

  • would find out is that this is a major sixth, in fact it isn't.

  • There's natural, F natural is a semitone lower than

  • the F sharp that we expect in the major key.

  • So, what we can say then is that it's a major interval that's

  • been made smaller by a semitone and that gives us a minor sixth.

  • Let's click this and see if we're right.

  • Fantastic.

  • Okay, so in this case we've got an E to C flat.

  • Let's work through this one then, because this could be quite interesting.

  • We've got A, B, C, so that's one, two, three.

  • We know it's a third of some description.

  • Now, if we had, If we will imagine that we're in the key of the lowest note,

  • so A-major, we would expect to find an F-sharp, C-sharp, and G-sharp.

  • So this is a C flat.

  • But not only is it a C sharp that's been

  • made lower by one semitone, taking it to a C natural.

  • This has been lowered again, talking it to a C flat.

  • So if we had a C sharp, it would be a major

  • third, lower again to C natural, it would be a minor third.

  • And lower again to a C flat, that's a

  • minor third that's been lowered by a half step.

  • And a minor third that has been smaller by a

  • semitone or by a half step, is a diminished third.

  • Okay so let's have a look at this one, this is an

  • F, because remember we're in the bass clef now, to an A flat.

  • Now, if we were in the key of F major.

  • Remember we're [INAUDIBLE] we're in the major key of the lower two levels.

  • Then we would expect to find a B flat and that's all.

  • Now, in this case we've got an A flat.

  • So we would expect to find an A natural in the key of F

  • major and that would be a major third because we've got an A flat.

  • It's been lowered by a semi-tone.

  • Got an F to an A flat.

  • So that's no longer a major third as it would be if we had an F

  • to an A, if we lowered by a semitone so what we got is minor third.

  • Okay, so this is one of the examples.

  • Refer to that we can't really imagine within the key of the lower note.

  • The reason for that is that our lower note in this example

  • is a B sharp and there isn't a key of B sharp major.

  • So what I'm going to say is, when we get an example like this,

  • just ignore the accidental and ignore the key signature and imagine that we're in.

  • A key of B major.

  • So you can imagine that this lower note is a B

  • natural and therefore we will be in the key of B major.

  • Now B major has F sharp, C sharp, G sharp, D sharp and A sharp.

  • So we would expect this to be a D sharp.

  • So let's just go back one step then and

  • count the the number together with the numeric code

  • description of them to [UNKNOWN] code BS1, CS2, DS3

  • so this is the third of some of the description.

  • I'd rather say if we ran in the key of B major we do

  • expect that to be a D sharp, because that's part of the key signature.

  • If that was a D Sharp, that we be a major third.

  • Okay.

  • However, this is only a D natural, so B still

  • ignoring the sharp for just now, B to D natural.

  • Is a minor third.

  • Now because the lower note here has been raised by a semitone,

  • what that does is that effectively makes the interval smaller by a semitone.

  • The gap has been closed, making the interval smaller.

  • So would be a minor start if it was B to D, but what we've got is B sharp to D.

  • So it's actually a semitone smaller than a minor

  • third, and we refer to that as as diminished third.

  • Okay so what about this interval then.

  • We've got a B flat, to D flat.

  • Now if we were in the key of B flat major.

  • Again that's going to back imagining that we're in the key.

  • Of which the lower note is the tonic B flat.

  • You'd expect a B flat and an E flat.

  • Nothing else.

  • And what we find here is that we've actually got a D flat.

  • So if this a B flat to D natural, it would be major third.

  • But because it's a B flat to a D flat, which is a semitone smaller.

  • That means to interval is a semitone smaller than the major

  • third would be, so what we get is a minor third.

Hello everybody, it's Zack here.

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