Learning to identify melodic intervals by ear

As you observed in the first part of this series on playing by ear, how two notes sound when played one after another changes with the distance, or 'interval', between them. Every melody can be considered a series of ascending or descending intervals. This is easily observable on a piano keyboard, as the notes are laid out sequentially.

If you were to play a simple melody on a piano, such as the first part of 'Frère Jacques', and count the distance between the notes in semitones (the number of white and black keys between two notes), you'd notice the following pattern:

Thus, if you learn to identify the intervals you are hearing and associate them with your ocarina, you'll be able to play any melody you hear effortlessly.

The skill of identifying the distance between two notes is called relative pitch. It may seem intuitive that one can develop this skill by listening to the sound of different intervals repeatedly to memorise them. However, I believe that a better approach is to learn to sing the intervals first.

If you just listen, your brain might perceive the sounds as unimportant. However, when you use your voice, you perform the sounds yourself, which inevitably causes you to internalise them. While singing, you can also feel the difference between small and large intervals, and it is intuitive to learn how to audiate them.

If you can audiate an interval and sing it reliably, you objectively know it. It is straightforward to then associate this with the music you are hearing.

It does not matter how well you can sing for this to be a helpful practice approach. The goal is to internalise the intervals, not to become an expert singer.

Controlling your voice

The first step is to learn how to control the pitch of your voice. Sing a long vowel sound (A, E, I, O, or U) for the duration of a breath, and use a chromatic tuner to find out what note you are singing.

From here, try to vary your pitch up and down: if the tuner indicates that you're singing an A, try to raise the pitch such that the tuner shows A sharp or B.

If you haven't sung much before, you may find that your pitch jumps by a significant amount and that it is difficult to make small or smooth changes. This is OK, and was the case for me when I started. Fine control will improve over time with practice. It may take a few days to a few weeks until you can do these things without thinking.

You can practice varying the pitch of your voice up and down smoothly by singing 'whoop' sounds, starting low and smoothly bending your pitch upwards, and then the opposite, going back down. It can also be helpful to practice singing long tones, aiming to keep a single note stable for the duration of a whole breath.

You may or may not find that having audio to imitate helps with the above. Some people can easily match the pitch of their voice to a sound they are hearing. This skill is not innate in everyone, and was not for me. It is possible to learn to do so like this:

• Start by singing any pitch and notice the note letter using a chromatic tuner. Try to raise or lower the pitch until it is in tune.
• Play the same pitch on a piano or keyboard. Vary your pitch, sharp and flat, and notice how your voice sounds when the pitches do and don't match exactly.
• Play a different note, notice if it is higher or lower, and raise or lower the pitch you are singing until it matches. Use the tuner as a hint if necessary.

Music educators often make the false assumption that specific skills are innate in all people, which can be very confusing or lead to frustration. However, if you stick with this approach, hearing the difference between a note that you're singing and a note played on an instrument will become automatic after a few days.

Singing semitones

Being the smallest mon-microtonal interval in Western music, learning to sing a semitone is a great place to start. All other intervals can be expressed as two or more semitones, and thus, it gives you a means of navigating between notes.

The first thing I'd suggest is to find your vocal range, the lowest and highest note you can sing. Using a chromatic tuner, lower your sung pitch as much as you can, then raise it as much as you can, noticing the highest and lowest note you can comfortably sing.

Knowing this, you can begin learning to sing semitones:

• Sing a note around the bottom of your vocal range as a long tone, either to a reference tone by ear or using a tuner.
• Now move up by one semitone (e.g. C to C sharp) using a tuner or reference note. Practice singing this note repeatedly as a long tone until you can do so easily.
• Sing the lower note again and practice singing a semitone from the lower note up to the higher, then back down to the lower one. You may find it helpful to play the same two notes simultaneously on a piano for reference.

Then you just need to repeat this process, moving up one semitone at a time from the higher of the two notes you sang before. Continue until you can sing a chromatic scale up and down over your whole vocal range. If you're new to singing, it could take a few days to several weeks to cover your entire vocal range. That's perfectly OK.

Singing other intervals

Once you can sing a semitone, its easy to learn all of the other intervals. For instance, you can sing a whole tone by starting with two sequential semitones:

• Start on a note around the bottom of your vocal range and sing a long tone on it to ensure you're comfortable holding the note in tune.
• Sing upwards by a semitone, then another.
• Sing a long tone on this note also, to help you learn what it feels like to sing it.
• Hold the pitch of the second note in your mind, return to the lower note, and practice singing upwards from it by a whole tone, landing on the second note.
• Then repeat the same thing going downwards.

It's straightforward to repeat this exercise from every note in the chromatic scale to learn to sing every whole tone that fits within your vocal range. If you wish, you could also learn to sing a whole tone scale, a series of sequential whole tones.

This process can also be used to learn all of the other intervals, and I recommend learning to sing the 12 intervals within an octave, shown below. These are discussed in more detail in Harmony for ocarina players.

• 1 – Minor second (Semitone)
• 2 – Major second (Whole tone)
• 3 – Minor third
• 4 – Major third
• 5 – Perfect fourth
• 6 – Tritone
• 7 – Perfect fifth
• 8 – Minor sixth
• 9 – Major sixth
• 10 – Minor seventh
• 11 – Major seventh
• 12 – Perfect octave

As these have both ascending and descending forms, there are a total of 24 to learn. This could seem like a lot, and so the old method of breaking things down comes into play.

Choose one interval and practice singing it for a few days until it becomes automatic. Once that one gets easy, pick a different interval and repeat. Possibly add one new interval every few days until you can reliably sing all of them.

However, there's no need to have learned all of the intervals before moving on to the later parts of this article. Learn to sing two or three intervals reliably, then start working on the following steps with those. Gradually add more intervals as your experience grows.

Song associations, a memory aid

As you learn more intervals, it can be helpful to connect each one with a melody as a memory aid. For instance, the first two notes of the song 'Greensleeves' form an ascending minor third. To remember the sound of the interval, you need only audiate the song.

This technique is most effective when you use your favourite music, as you'll already be familiar with it. So, which melody to use for each interval is not something I can tell you.

Study the music you enjoy listening to or playing regularly and identify the intervals that different parts of the song begin on. Make a list of these, and start practising the intervals by singing fragments of those songs in various parts of your vocal range.

In case you end up with gaps in the list, a web search for 'interval melody association' will find many lists of well-known songs and the intervals that they start on. Don't use something just because it shows up on such a list, though. Instead, use multiple lists and pick out music that you already know well.

If you have to use an unfamiliar song, I'd recommend practising singing it regularly to help you internalise it.

Starting to hear intervals by ear

Once you're able to sing a few intervals confidently without reference, it's a good point to start learning to identify them by ear. The idea here is to:

• Choose two or three intervals to practice.
• Have a friend or a software tool tell you the name of the intervals and play them it for you.
• Listen to different intervals played randomly and identify what you hear. Another person or a tool is critical, as if you perform the interval yourself, you will know what you played.

Numerous ear training apps can be used, such as Gnu Solfege and countless mobile apps. If you use software, prefer apps that allow you to choose the intervals that you want to practice. In Solfege, this can be done by selecting 'configure yourself' then 'melodic intervals'.

Of course, practising with another person could be more enjoyable. It is also easy to turn the exercise into a group game where each person plays an interval, and the others have to identify it. See who gets the most correct.

Should you find yourself struggling at all, try singing what you're hearing and relate that to the song associations you've learned. The difficulty can be controlled in several ways:

• It can be made easier by practising very distinct interval pairs, like a minor second vs. a perfect fifth, and more difficult by hearing intervals that are closer together.
• It is easier when the intervals start from the same base note, and harder when they are played in different parts of the range.

I'd also suggest practising in short sessions of a few minutes, because it can be fatiguing if done for too long.

Playing some short melodies by ear

Once you get the hang of hearing a few intervals, it's a great point to start playing some simple melodies by ear on your instrument.

There is a bit of complexity that arises because the scales used to write music are built around irregular patterns of intervals. It is necessary to learn how to relate what you are hearing to the instrument, and you may or may not be comfortable playing arbitrary intervals within your ocarina's chromatic scale.

What I'd suggest is to choose one scale that you're already confident playing and learn to understand it from a perspective of intervals. Should you choose a major scale, you may find it helpful to learn to sing the scale first, by deliberately singing the sequence of intervals it is built from.

For example, should you choose the C scale of a C ocarina, pick a note within this scale and ask someone to play you some two-note melodic intervals starting from this note. Recognise the interval that you heard and perform it on your instrument. If you chose low C, moving from low C to D would be a whole tone, C to E would be a major third, and so on.

Next, choose a different note within the same scale and repeat the exercise. As you do so, notice that the intervals you will hear are different. If you consider the thirds in C major, for example, moving from C to E is a four-semitone interval, also called a major third. However, A to the C above is three semitones, a minor third, because B to C is one semitone.

I recommend creating diagrams similar to the one below. Start by listing the interval formula of a given scale. For each note write out what interval is created from there to all of the other notes. The example includes the intervals up to the perfect fourth within an octave of the C scale. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to expand it to include the intervals crossing the octave, as well as larger intervals.

The next step would be to start practising playing some short melodies by ear. Choose a scale and starting note, them ask someone to play you some sequences starting from it. Try to recognise what intervals were played and perform them on your instrument. Did what you played sound correct?

You may initially find it confusing to distinguish between similar patterns, and if so, it's worth practising them repeatedly to help you hear the difference. Learning to sing them can also help.

Closing

Learning how to sing intervals is an effective way to internalise their sound, and from this point, it is pretty straightforward to learn to hear them. Unfortunately, listening to sounds in this way is not a commonly used skill outside of music. There's a good chance that you've never done anything similar before, and because of this, it can take some time to see results.

It does get easier with persistence, and any other experience that you can give yourself with listening can only help. For example, if you have a guitar, ukulele, or a similar instrument, learning how to tune it by ear is a valuable exercise.

As you get more experience, it will become important to practise hearing intervals in a wide range of keys and octaves. Doing this on the ocarina can be a bit challenging due to the instrument's limited range. Either use ocarinas in different keys or employ a different instrument as a practice tool.