J. Anthony Allen shows how to identify intervals by their position on the staff: adjacent spaces or lines make a third, two apart make a fifth, three apart make a seventh. Line-to-space intervals are seconds, fourths, sixths, or octaves. Use the key signature to determine if an interval is major or minor.
Okay, let's talk about identifying intervals just by sight, quick. The way we're going to do that is visual landmarks. Now, this isn't going to tell us, in the case of like a third, if it's a major or minor third, but it's going to let us spot a third really fast. So I just want to point out a couple of these things. It's going to save you a lot of time in the future. Let's do this in the key of F. Okay, so I'm going to put an F here. Now, here's a couple things to remember for identifying intervals. Whenever you're looking at a third, if the first note is on a space and you're using the next space, you're looking at a third. No matter where you are, if you got two spaces right next to each other, you're looking at a third. Same deal with lines. If you're looking at a line, the next line on top of it, you're looking at a third. Okay? So whenever you see a line, whenever you see a space and a space and they're adjacent, they're right next to each other, or a line and a line and they're right next to each other, you are looking at a third. Now, we can't tell if that's a major or minor third, but we can tell that it is a third. So here we have going up a bunch of thirds right? Now, we're actually not in the key of F here because what I need to do is that that puts us in the key of F, because don't forget we have a key signature. Now I can figure out if it's a major or minor third because I have the key signature of F. I've just put one flat in here. I could just do the key signature itself. Let's do that. Okay, so now the key signature is there. So this is a B flat. So if this is the I chord, I know it's only two notes, but that's okay. Then that means that this is going to be a major third. If this is the two chord, that means this is going to be a minor third. Because just remember the diatonic chord progression, right? Major, minor, minor. This one's going to be a minor third, too. The bottom third of that chord is going to be minor. So we can tell by thinking about the key a little bit more. But just by looking at the lines and spaces, we can identify the thirds. Let's do another 1/5. Okay. If we take an F, we do the same kind of thing. Where we do. If this first one is on a space, the next space is going to be a third. The next space is going to be a fifth. Okay, if we're on a line, the next line is going to be a third. The next line is going to be a fifth. If it's on a space and then two spaces higher, it's also on a space, you are looking at a fifth. If it's on a line and then two lines higher, you're looking at a fifth. So these are all fifths. Oops, those are fifths going up. So remember, space in a space with nothing in between. Line in a line, nothing in between. It's a quick way to identify a fifth, a seventh. Identify a seventh. Same deal. We just go up one more. This is going to be a seventh because we have space, nothing, nothing and space. Here we have line, nothing, nothing and a line. It's another way to identify a seventh. Okay, so keep that in mind. Now for seconds, fourths, sixth and octaves. It's always going to be the opposite of whatever the first note is. So if this one is on a line and you've got a note on a space, it's going to be either a second, fourth, sixth or octave. So in this case, it's a second. Here's one on where we have one note on a line or on a space, one note on a line, that's a fourth and we could count up notes. So these ones are less useful, but still kind of useful. Here's a note on a line or on a space. Here's a note on a line, that's a sixth. Here's a note on a line, here's. Or on a space. Here's a note on a line, that's an octave. So octaves are always going to be a wide gap where one is on a space and one is on a line or opposite. So here's a line, here's a space, that's a second. Here's a line, here's a space, that's a fourth. Here's a line, Here's a space, that's a sixth. Here's a line. Oops. Here's a space, that's an octave. So they're going to be opposite for those four, and that's it. So I just wanted to point those out, quick visual ways to identify some of the intervals that we're going to be working with now. We have not talked yet about big intervals. We've only talked about intervals within an octave. But intervals can be bigger. That's an interval. So let's talk about those in the next video.
