Week 3: Intervals

This week we will be working with the melodic, or tonal, interval. We tend to conceptualize the interval in terms of up and doen, or high and low, but actually the physics is one of faster vibration frequency (higher), and slower frequency (lower).

But high and low works well, and in fact we visualize that way on the staff. Up along the staff is higher and down is lower in pitch.

The interval is the "distance" between two tones, but in actuality its the ratios of their vibratory rates, or frequencies.

We talked about how the octave is divided up into 12 equal half steps, with the octave, 5th and 4th being the three critical tones in any scale, and that is directly related to the physics  of the Overtone system.

I'll be putting up the simple instructions for calculating the Number and Quality of any interval. In the work book this is covered from page 15 to page 23.

Wednesday we'll introduce the interval inversion. But first we have to have the interval identification down solid.