VIDEO 3 (of 4) | Interval Recognition

What was your biggest takeaway from this lesson?

Will start with simple folk tunes. Try to play in head and then check on keyboard. Skip to My Lou, You are my Sunshine, Clementine, Red River Valley etc. Hard for me to visualize without actual keyboard to check intervals so expect I will be singing up and down the scale a lot.

‘nother good video. To answer your question, while watching the video and hearing the Billy Bragg song–another came to mind because it seems to start the same way. “Hey Jude” by the Beatles seems to start with the same two notes–that descending minor third. (I cheated and actually already did the transcription in my head, and then tested it. It worked).

Something else that helps “lock me in” to the proper location for the melody in the key is the bass note feeling “grounded” (either in the major I or minor i chord). What I mean is, if the bass note sounds like it could end the song, then you can be almost sure it’s either the major or minor 1. Then compare that note to the melody note for location. Its how I knew that first melody note was a 5 and not a 1 in your example.

To add… as a “40+ year old fogie” I’ve been looking for ways to get hip to the newest pop songs… since POP music seems to be one of the best sources for ear training. VEVO’s YouTube site has a weekly list of the top pop tunes. (Some of them made me cringe, but others were perfectly listenable).

Great Video Julian. Hope your Family is doing well. Happy to see you and your videos again.

Nicely, nicely done Julian. There is a lot of study and practice packed into this lesson. What a great gift to budding musicians. Thank you so much. Mike

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Arr I’m so pleased to hear this MT. I get nervous every time I post a new video, I never know how it will be received – but I really wanted to share this one and show you how I think when I play by ear.
And part II of this video will go even more into these techniques – I’ll transcribe 3 minor scale songs and walk you through even more.

Ziglio! Thank you so much for your inspiring comment – it makes my day hearing that you’re fired up to get started.
If you love jazz, then don’t let me stop you – follow your heart. Any practice is good practice. Some jazz is certainly fine – the earlier jazz songs are closer to being diatonic – songs like ‘In The Mood’ by Glenn Miller, ‘Cheek To Cheek’, or ‘What A Wonderful World’ would be good.
These songs are predominantly major – so you can transcribe each in C major (as I did in this video – stick to C major).

And in part II of this video we’ll look at the minor scale (C minor) – and you could transcribe some minor jazz songs like Summertime, or even Cry Me A River – in C minor scale.

Thanks so much for your comment Ziglio, and enjoy your transcribing!

TD! So pleased to hear that you spotted the COMMON PATTERN between Hey Jude, and the New England song I transcribed in the video. That is exactly what ear training is – it’s learning the common melodic shapes that get used over and over – so that you can spot them next time.
Every song you transcribe teaches you something new – either a new melodic pattern in the scale, or a new chord progression. And once you’ve learnt it (by transcribing the song), you’ll notice it again in future – when another song uses the same pattern.
After all – there’s only 7 notes, and 6 chords – that most music uses – so most music is using the same repeating patterns.
But the key is – to transcribe every song in the same key, so that you spot these patterns. If you were to transcribe Hey Jude in F# major, and then New England in Bb major – you might not have noticed the same ‘5 – 3’ melodic pattern – or at least most musicians would not have spotted the same pattern, because they’d be distracted by the 2 different keys.
So as you transcribe every song in the same key, your knowledge of the ‘common patterns’ will build up very quickly. In fact a repertoire of just 10 songs, all transcribed in the same key, will teach you a lot about music – and you’ll know what to expect.

And regarding your baseline method – that’s exactly what I teach in The Musical Ear. When identifying chords by ear, start by identifying the I chords in the progression – and the way you do that, is listen for ‘the chord that the music could end on’.

And once you find that chord that the music could end on (the I chord) – that also tells you the bass note, which will be the root note of that chord, and the scale (C).

And from there – you can listen to where C moves next. If it moves up a whole-step – then you know the bass moved to D – and the chord above will be D minor the ii chord. Then if it goes up a 4th – you know it went to the 5th (G) – and the chord above will be G major the V chord.

I’m really pleased you’re branching out into pop music. I feel the exact same way – ‘pop’ brings the generic music you hear on pop radio to mind – but really it just means MOST music – the 90% of music that people are making these days. And there’s a lot of great ‘pop’ music – it includes country music, electronic music, acoustic music … most music.

I hope you find some new bands that you like to listen to, and that you enjoy transcribing. It’s great that you’re open to listening to new music too.

Thanks TD for your great comments and observations – I’ll see you in part II to this lesson in a couple of days :)

I’ll be trying to do this with the Harry Potter theme this week! :) I’ve been the same way as Adrian lately and wanting to run first before being comfortable with simpler tunes. My challenge is still breaking down those intervals with the stepping stone method. Just need to keep trying!

Charles! So great to hear from you as always.
Harry Potter theme will be perfect for you – it comes out of key / scale in a few places, but only a bit – it is mostly in the minor scale, but comes out of key at the end of each phrase. Let me know how you get on!

Something short and easy. :-) “In Christ There Is No East or West,” the basic tune, but not the complicated fingerstyle version by Leo Kottke.

It is my pleasure to meet you Julian, my name is Hiromasa. Though I studied music in London for last 2 years, it was hard to glue everything together that I learned. Probably all of the elements I learned during last 2 years are very essentials though it looks as though nothing is linked together and I found hard to find the guidance so far. I firmly believe that your lesson is the key to put everything into place because all the staff I saw in your free lessons are playing significant part to organize information I have in my brain and many of those small pieces scattered all over start coming together. Many thanks. I am on the start of ear training but to identify the half tone interval is not easy for the learner who never tried before, but its great fun and challenge!

That I think I can immediately determine intervals by ear, and with that, and knowing the pentatonic notes, I can likely determine which notes in the scale are being played.

Awesome, I love learning! Didn’t realize how easy it was to find the chords in the melody,,,,,wow! Just ran through a song we do at church in a minute and found all the chords with ease. Simple things are so awesome! Thanks Julian!

My take away from this lesson is: 1) I need to learn the twelve intervals (Googled this and became confused), and 2) Learning chords is so much simpler when learning it on a scale than trying to memorize. Awesome video :-D

I notice at 13:23 when you say and play A minor with your left hand. You missed the C and played it with your little finger the next octave up. I don’t understand? is it not the chord with A space C space E. You played the next C up. Does that matter? Sorry if silly question but I am only just starting chords.

it’s really hard for me to figure out the music without the instrument. do you think it could be benifitial to just do a couple of melodies by trail & error if i understand scales well enough? (like you said you did at the beggining)

That music of police remember to a music of R. Kelly, I believe I can fly!!!!. my biggest takeway from this lesson was that i see the pentatonic scale with a visual image, is very easy with that way!!!

With those lessons a lot of to date unrelated knowledge gets conntected: Three takeaways that build on one another – also because your didactics are spot on:
First takeaway: There’s conventions. At it’s structural base music is neither arbitrary nor magic. Such as pentatonic notes, chords derived from scale, melody notes that stem from chords, tonic dominance, starting and ending with the tonic, resolution dynamics, logic of intervals
Second takeaway: To focus on intervals.
Third takeaway: To trust my “ears” which is related to the major takeaway from the second video – learning to play by ear is rather based on the brain than my ears.

I feel a lot less stupid today in an area where I almost gave up because I was fed up with being unable to connect the dots. These are really amazing lessons you share. Thanks a lot for your dedication to demystification, Julian

Great series of videos, Julian , but I’m a little confused , in that one minute you say the Pentatonic Scale contains the most likely notes to be heard in modern western music ( ie no 4th (F) and 7th (B), in a C major piece ) then in the first transcription you say the first half-step interval is E to F AND later the F major chord is used !

Hi Julian , The only troube for me was to keep the specific rythme of the second song (I didn’t knew it) Please

I’m just starting out with ear training, but to me it seems more natural to first establish which note is the key note (which can almost always be done using only intuition), and then to hear the other notes based on their relationship to the key note or sometimes to other important notes in the key, depending on the context. I seem to find it very difficult to transcribe by recognising intervals between the notes since, depending on the position in the scale, a given interval can have a very different feeling. For example, in a major key, the interval between the 3rd and the 5th is a minor 3rd. But it usually doesn’t have a minor feeling at all in the context of a major key.

This was a great lesson! I thoroughly enjoyed it and now have even started trying to think ahead to try and figure melodies out. I can see how knowing what key you’re in could help drastically to transpose the tune. I have a question though.

How do you know what key you’re in? Is there a way to figure out what key you’re in or standard keys to try?

I am loving your YouTube series immensely! Keep up the great work!

Trying get to grips with recognising intervals…I have trouble spotting the half step/ semitone in the context of singing or playing the major scale- I seem to hear it (the scale) as a whole/ gestalt-( is the only way I can explain it,) but it’s immediately apparent when I play a minor triad. I think that learning to sing a minor triad and possibly other intervals is likely to help me?

Hi Julian great ear training videos, many thanks. One question, I play tenor sax so in playing C concert parts I am up a tone to get the same note. When looking for songs to transcribe, rather than C minor should I be looking at Dm sax parts? Best Paul