Online Ear Training Sites

Learn to Hear is an easy to navigate and use site that will enable you to hone your listening skills.


There are four sections (Intervals, Scales, Triads and Tetrads) each of which presents ear training games of varying difficulty. In the Intervals section, you'll see one they've called "Primo". This is just a regional variant of "Unison".

The Triads section contains ear training games to test your abilities to distinguish between Major and Minor.

In the Scales section you'll see this page:


Check the "Practice Isolated" box for "Ionian/Major". The exercises then ask you simply to be able to distinguish between Major scales and scales that aren't Major.

There are plenty of other more advanced ear training games at this site for you to play. They're the sorts of things you won't be examined on for the MUSI course but I encourage you to explore them once you're confident with the basics.

Lesson 8 - Intervals & The Major Scale

The ability to hear and identify musical intervals is the most useful skill you can learn! There are only 12 intervals - each with a unique, individual sound and a name. The names given to the intervals are all based on their relationship to the Major scale. This is why your knowledge of the Major scale is fundamentally important to learning everything else in music.

The term "Major scale" (Major scale - singular) is used deliberately to emphasise the fact that there may be 12 possible starting notes for it but that the pattern of interval steps is exactly the same, regardless of the starting note. Column I lists these 12 possibilities. Each row thus becomes the Major scale from C (C Major), the Major scale from F (F Major), from Bb (Bb Major), etc. and takes its name from the note in column I.


Some Music Theory Trivia

The Major scale rows for Gb Major and F# are separated from the rows above and below purely to highlight that the notes used in both are exactly the same. It is also done to draw attention to a common misconception - that sharps and flats are "the black keys". This is partly true but it's to your advantage to understand that sharps and flats perform a special function. They are symbols to indicate that a written note, whatever it's name, is to be "altered" - i.e., a sharp instructs the player to play the note a half-step higher than the one written; a flat says play the note that is a half-step lower than the one written.

For example, in the Gb Major scale, step IV is Cb. The flat sign here refers to a white key (B). So, why name it Cb and not B? Because in the (theoretical) construction of Major scales, the 7 note name letters can only be used once and the note name B is needed to name Bb (step III of Gb Major). The same is true for seemingly weird notes such as E#.

Major Scale Construction Formula

At first glance the Major scale might appear to be constructed of 8 notes, labelled using the Roman numerals of I through VIII and coloured pale blue in the illustration above. The pale yellow columns indicate where the notes not needed for each Major scale are located. The red column is used for a note not used in the Major scale which is located exactly half way between Step I and Step VIII. It should be visually apparent that the Major scale is actually created using two identical 4 note patterns - i.e., steps I, II, III and IV have the same pattern as steps V, VI, VII and VIII. More on this below.

The Relationship of Intervals to the Major Scale

The names of the intervals are listed in the second row of the illustration above. Each of them relates to the column in which they appear and they all take their name depending on their distance higher than the note (or sound) in column I. Because intervals occur between sounds, two notes are required in order to create an interval. The first of these is then used as a reference point and can be thought of as "Doh" where Doh is any of the notes in column I.

Naming the 12 Intervals

One note sound following another can only be one of three things:

• the same sound
  
• higher in pitch, or
  
• lower in pitch

When one sound follows another and it's the same, it's called a Unison.

If the second sound is higher than the first, the Interval is "ascending" and it can be located using the "Relationship to Major Scale" column and named using one of the "Interval Names (Ascending)"

If the second sound is lower than the first, the Interval is "descending" and it can be located using the "Inverse (Descending)" column and named using one of the "Inverse Interval Names".

For example, if the first note is C and the next note is an E that is higher than C, then C is I and E's relationship to it is III - i.e., E is a Major 3rd higher than C.

If the the first note is C and the next note is an E lower than C, then C is VIII and the lower E's relationship is still III, but the interval drop is a Minor 6th.

Trivia:

The sum of an ascending interval with its corresponding descending inverse adds up to 9. Furthermore, an ascending interval's quality is also inversed by its corresponding descending partner. Examples:

• an ascending Major 3rd (C up to E) is the same note as a descending Minor 6th (C down to E)
  
• a descending Minor 7th (C down to D) is the same note as an ascending Major 2nd (C up to D)
  
• an ascending Perfect 4th (C up to F) is the same note as a descending Perfect 5th (C down to F)
  

Lesson 1 - Preparing to Play

• be seated comfortably and sitting up straight at your piano
• position yourself so you're squarely facing the center of keyboard
• relax your arms from the shoulder and place both hands on the keyboard
• you should be seated at a distance so that your hands easily reach the keyboard but aren't so close that your wrists are bent
• your fingers should be curved to play the keys with their tips
  
• your thumbs should rest on the keys alongside the other fingers
• the backs of your hands should be level so that a coin could be balanced on them while the fingers play
  

Traps to Avoid

• flattening your fingers on the keys
• curling fingers (particularly the 4th and 5th) tightly when they're not being used to play
• thumbs dropping away from the keys when other fingers play
• fingers sticking straight when not being used to play

Music Note Names

A piano keyboard commonly has 88 black and white keys but there are only 12 distinct notes we manipulate to make music. Furthermore, there are only 7 letters of the alphabet used to name those 12 notes. They are:

A B C D E F G

The notes named by these 7 letters are all white keys on the keyboard. To locate them, we use the pattern of the black keys.

The black keys are arranged into a repeating pattern: a group of two and a group of three. The white key located between every pair of black keys is named D. The white key to its left is C and the white key to its right is named E.

Activity:

• Locate and play all of the Ds on your keyboard
• Locate and play all of the Cs
• Locate and play all of the Es

Once you feel comfortable you can find each of these easily, repeat the activity with your eyes closed.

• Use the feel of your fingers to guide you firstly to all the Ds.
• With your eyes still closed, listen to the sound of each D you play
• Notice the similarity in the sound of all the Ds
• Listen to the difference in their sound - the further down to your left you go, the "lower" in pitch they sound. Moving up the keyboard to the right and all the Ds sound "higher" in pitch.
• Notice how much your hearing feels like it improves when you close your eyes
• Enjoy that feeling!
  

Useful Tips & Practice Strategies

• Whenever you're learning anything new to play on the keyboard, experiment and play around with it until you can do it with your eyes (literally) closed
• Experiment by learning to play things equally well with both hands (separately first, and then hands together)
  
• LISTEN to everything you play!