Teach Yourself Music Theory – 5.) General Guide To Intervals

An interval is the distance between two different pitches/notes. The two different notes can either occur at the same time (called a harmonic interval) or consecutively one after another (called a melodic interval).

The smallest, and most basic, interval used in Western music is the semitone/half-step. A semitone is the distance traveled from one key on a piano to the next adjacent key. Combining two semitones together make a whole-step. Half- and whole-steps make up a lot of the fundamentals understanding different aspects of music.

Now, what do we call intervals that aren’t two notes right next to each other? Below is a graph that I’ll explain:

The first process of finding the name of any interval is counting how many semitones it is made of. Start with the lowest note of the pair and count on the keyboard how many semitones are traveled to reach the higher pitch. From there, look at the letter names. How far apart are they? Remember: the letter names go in a repeating ascending order of – A B C D E F G A B C D … From there, you can find on the graph above what to name the interval.

So, say you went from middle C to G3. G3 is lower than middle C (otherwise known as: C4), so let’s count up from there. Middle C is five semitones above G3. Counting letter names we get: G A B C , which means a distance of three letter names were traveled. From all this information, we can conclude that this is a perfect fourth of P4 in abbreviation.

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Tip #21 – Substitute Dominant!

Hey, if this works in jazz music, why not in other styles of music?

To explain what a substitute dominant chord (or “tritone-sub” as it is also called – which you will see & recognize why later), take a cadential V7 – I progression:

Now, erase everything except for the tritone of the V7 chord:

If you recall, a tritone can be spelled both a d5 as well as a A4 interval. Keeping that in mind, flip the tritone upside-down. From there, you might have to respell in an enharmonic.

Finally, fill in these bare bones with what can be made as a dominant chord. As you can see, the substitute dominant acts as a bII7/I and that can be your shortcut to getting to it.


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Tip #20 – Coming Home to your Newly Renovated Tonic

Along your musical journey in your upcoming work, you might stray away from your home (the tonic) only to come back… at yet, while it seems familiar, there is something different. Things aren’t quite the same…

Sometimes to achieve this sense of a perfect cadence, but with emotional feels of nostalgia – or maybe something is out of place – the tonic triad “home-base” needs to be modified in some way.

This can be done easily by adding a note outside of the usually harmony. 7ths and upper extensions can work, but aim for when voicing this newly adapted tonic that this additional color tone is placed discretely to give the chord a new shading.


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Tip #19 – Evading A Cadence

Take a look at this cadential figure below:

We can tell that this piece is in the key of a minor and uses a V – i ending. Now, let’s lessen the strength of this ending with an evaded cadence.

In an evaded cadence, extra measures are added to dilute the ending structure, and more likely than not, the motion is creatively headed into a new key area.

In the edit above, a few more measures of the penultimate measure were repeated and varied. Then, the harmonic motion was turned from a V – i ending in the key of a minor, to a IV – I plagal cadence in the key of B Major.


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Tip #18 – Implying A Cadence

Look at this example below:

We can see a lot of things from this; in particular, we have some cadential motion going on with a raised C# to D in the key of d minor. Also, there is an F underneath the D which make up an i chord of Dm. Plus, there is an A bass root in the pervious bar which act as a V to i cadence.

But there really isn’t a root motion of V to i at all with the bass note missing. Yet, if performed, we do hear this as a cadence.

Point I’m getting at: sometimes even with the removal of “the floor beneath” you can still imply a cadence. While it is certainly not as strong as a perfect authentic cadence in full, it might be the weak cadence you are looking for.


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Tip #17 – Ways To Milk The End

While one option is to end with a cadence that is short & sweet (or even to the short-end extreme of abrupt/without-warning), another is to milk it for as long as possible. Take a cadential phrase like this:

Even though a simple way is to stretch it out with some prolongation of the tones, there are more creative ways.

Commonly found in classical music, the cadential chord can receive some treatment of reiteration in different inversions, vertical structures, voicings, registers, etc.

Another way to lengthen the end is to arpeggiate the chord out:


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Tip #16 – Suppress an Ending with an Elided Cadence Maneuver

Continuing on the topic of lessening the impact of a cadential figure in order to maintain a sense of flow while signaling to the listener the termination of a phrase, we are going to look at the use of an elided cadence.

Think about using an elided cadence as crossing the finish line – but still continuing to run. It occurs in music when a new phrase begins before or at the same time as the cadential chord that is just about to close the previous musical idea.

Here is the tail-end of a musical phrase with the cadence happening on beat one and stopping right there in its tracks:

To lessen the sudden impact of the stop in motion, try having a voice start a new phrase. It could look something like this:

This gives the flow of being together, but at the same time being two different recognizable ideas.


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Teach Yourself Music Theory – 4.) Accidentals (Which Are No Accident)

Sometimes when looking at a score, you might have noticed an odd looking symbol next on the left side of the note head, which is the oval part of a note. These symbols are called accidentals, and they modify the notated pitch.

The first is the sharp, which looks like a (#) and tells the performer to raise the pitch up to the next closest pitch. Remember those black keys on the keyboard? Well, we can finally give them names as such:

After that is the flat, which looks like a (b) and tells the performer to lower the pitch down to the next closest pitch. So those black keys would also have these names in place, too:

But wait. The G# is in the same spot as an Ab, and a B# is where C already is? Is this possible?? Indeed it is, and we call this an enharmonic, when there are two or more names for a pitch.

Now in some extreme cases, you might see a double-sharp, which looks like an (x) and tells to raise up two consecutive pitches; and a double-flat, which looks like a (bb) and likewise tells to lower down two consecutive pitches. So Ebb is an enharmonic of a D.

To wipe the slate clean and tell that a letter name should be back in the original white key space, use a natural sign as seen last in the first picture above.


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Tip #15 – Colors in a Delayed Cadence

In a world where perfection is held high, imperfection can & should shine just as bright with its own uniqueness. Modern academics in composition teach how to write perfect cadential figures, but they should not be look as an end-all-be-all as how to conclude a musical idea.

Beautiful colors can bleed into the holes of a cadential phrase by delaying the resolution of a voice (usually the melody) with a suspension or appoggiatura. Eventually, it will resolve on a weaker beat, but the goal is to land on a tone not typically found in the cadential chord.


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Thinking Out Loud – Misconception of Music As “Easy” Job

These past couple of months, I have been wondering about the origin of this myth as music being – especially in the form of composition, songwriting, arranging, orchestrating, etc. – recognized as an “easy” job.

Without a doubt, we can take into account the climate of academic culture where more value is placed on mathematics, sciences, and language & cultural studies. That because music is “extracurricular” in the world of school, we are imbed to believe that it is extraordinary – out of the customary – of what society should deem as intelligence.

We say to others to follow your dreams, make a passion out of your skills, be successful… but we tip the scale of determining worth heavier on the ends of jobs that have a core in standard academics than artistry. That hard work has a value determined by the academic subject it is founded on.

Can a person who works 40 hours a week doing mathematics have more or less of a arduous lifestyle than a musician playing late-night gigs and freelancing other skills 24/7? I say that these cannot be sole variables in determining how “easy” a job is.

Just thinking out loud.