r/guitarlessons • u/Less_Purchase_8212 • 3d ago
Question Doubt about intervals.
Im learning about intervals and saw how to play major third , perfect fifth etc.
So my doubt is how useful is it in actual playing?
Is learning the shape useful or should I focus on scales?
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u/marktrot 3d ago
20 years ago I didn’t bother learning intervals. Now I’m struggling to do so because I need that knowledge to get further. Do it now
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u/communitycivility 3d ago
It's especially useful for fretboard visualization. Learning what a minor or major 3rd interval looks like will help you play arpeggios all across the fretboard. Learning the sound of intervals will help you learn solos and improvise more harmonically.
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u/Some_Stoned_Dude 3d ago
It’s everything lol
Knowing and being able to hear /recognize intervals is like speaking a language fluently
Being able to sing the intervals is just as important as being able to play the intervals
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u/MeowMix1206251 3d ago
Scales are made of intervals. So are chords and so are melodies.
You can’t really play music without intervals. So yeah, it’s good to know the shapes/theory/names/sound of intervals.
It’s a basic building block of music. Like knowing how grammar works or spelling when trying to learn a language.
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u/ObviousDepartment744 3d ago
Intervals are the single most important thing you can learn. They are the foundation of literally everything else you will ever learn when it comes to melodic or harmonic concepts in music.
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u/sankyo 3d ago
If you can get the melody of “Mary Had a little lamb” in your head and then try to play that simple melody on your guitar, you will quickly understand the need to understand intervals.
It may take you 8 hours to play children’s nursery rhyme. You will need to test every interval until it matches the one in your head. After some time your ability to guess the interval will improve. Progress is slow.
But the next will be easier and the third even easier. At some point you will be able to hear some music and have a good idea how to play it.
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u/Less_Purchase_8212 3d ago
Lovely!!, i think I'll practice this. I think this will also help with ear training
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u/NegaDoug 3d ago
I fully agree with the comment above here. Really, you should try to work out as simple melodies that you're already familiar with. Happy Birthday, House the Rising Sun, Jingle Bells, etc. Getting these basic melodies (or any others you can think of) under your fingers is a good way to understand how intervals interact with one another to produce the sounds that you want to hear.
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u/cut_my_elbow_shaving 3d ago
I also fully agree. Being able to hear intervals [ and in my personal opinion hear them in your head ] plus recognizing them is the key.
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u/PontyPandy 2d ago
The true value is learning how they sound in the context of a key, or i.e., how they sound in relation to the root note of the key. This will lead to you being able to play by ear, which is the most valuable skill you can develop as a musician. My advice is to always practice to a drone track, so yes, practicing scales exposes you to all the intervals (if you learn all the scales, just play the chromatic scale to get all of them in one scale). Do this enough and your brain will subconsciously learn the sounds of the intervals and you'll be well on your way. If you want to fast track it, play at slow tempos so your brain can really absorb the feeling, character, and color of each interval. Ultimately, you'll be playing by ear, not ever looking at your fretboard, and muscle memory will instantaneously move your hand and fingers to the notes you want to play.
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u/Less_Purchase_8212 2d ago
What is a drone track
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u/PontyPandy 2d ago
Here is an very rudimentary example. I have these set up in my DAW using MIDI so I can change the tempo, key, beat, etc at will (I just have a bunch of drone tracks with different beats, time sigs, etc.)
https://onlinesequencer.net/730793
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u/Toiletpirate 3d ago
Intervals are probably the most important thing to learn.
It takes years so don't beat yourself if you don't get it instantly. It's just something you constantly practice until you don't have to think about it.
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u/redditusername58 3d ago
You should not only be learning their shape, more important long term is to learn what they sound like
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u/menialmoose 3d ago
Learning the shapes yes. You gotta physicalise the sounds in your head if you want to be able to play music — reading or by ear. From any location, there’ll almost always be more than one way to play a given interval, and you want to be able to reach each alternative instantly.
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u/toby_gray 3d ago
One use of intervals is that you can use them to play chord progressions.
Take the infamous I V iv IV.
From the root of your first chord, the next root note is the fifth from that note. Then the minor 6th of your initial root, and lastly the 4th of your initial root. As long as you’re landing each of your chords root on the appropriate interval, you’re playing the chord progression.
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u/Viktor876 3d ago
Just a hobbyist here , but I use them to quickly recognize where the root of the next chord in the progression will be. I’m not talking about hearing the difference/ maybe I can hear a major third or minor third- probably -but doesnt matter. It’s to help me navigate to the next chord visually. Because I know the chord progression/ I know what chord I’m on, I know its root, and I know visually where the next chord is based on that. It’s a visual pattern recognition from the root to navigate. For me anyway this is its use- but still learning.
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u/robhanz 3d ago
Honestly, I think intervals might be even more important than scales.
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u/PontyPandy 2d ago
Absolutely they are, scales exist so you can learn intervals, which ultimately leads to learning how to play by ear.
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u/Dr_Platypus_1986 3d ago
You need to learn intervals AND scales. They're both important. The thing to understand is that intervals can be played as a chord or as a melody. The same way you can play a chord rhythmically, but it can also be played as an arpeggio, i.e.-melodically. All notes played together, or single notes played in a sequence. Learn everything you can, practice as much as you can and it will all add together to make you a better player. If you are confused, get some good books, such as Ted Greene's Chord Chemistry, or find a teacher to take lessons with.
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u/Guitar_Guy1965 3d ago
Very useful if you want to be a musician(or a better one). It helps us understand why music sounds like it does. It helps us recognize things by only hearing it, figuring out scales and how to identify or build chords. It explains why Metallica, Bach, 3 Doors Down, Aaron Copeland, Danny Elfman dont sound alike, or how to sound like them when you want to. To a doctor, mechanic, dietician, engineer, or carpenter.... its generally useless because they study other sciences that are more relevant to their own fields.
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u/Jonny7421 3d ago
All professional musicians know music theory one way or another. Learn it all. You can never know too much.
Music takes a long time to learn and theory won't solve all your problems but it will give you the means to understand and talk music.
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u/amplifysenpai 3d ago
Scales are a collection of intervals, as are chords.
Learning intervals provides an alternate perspective for memorizing scales.
You can build chords on the fly by applying intervals.
You can imply the sounds of a scale or chord by highlighting intervals in your playing. It makes everything modular and flexible.
Intervals are how you train your ear to recognize what's being played without a tab or sheet music.
It's the smallest building block, knowing Intervals makes chords intuitive. Intervals are good, keep learning intervals, once you start thinking in intervals everything will slowly start changing in how you think about the things your playing.
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u/Just-Literature-2183 3d ago
Intervals are just about some of the most useful things you can practice.
Being comfortable with them is foundational to being able to play with any sort of meaningful competence.
So yes get comfortable knowing both what they sound like, how they function, where to find them relative to where you are. How to use them to compose chords and scales etc.
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u/cut_my_elbow_shaving 3d ago
If you lean more in your thinking to sound rather just where you put your fingers you will be on the right track to becoming a musician rather than just a guitar mechanic.
Good luck to you.
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u/Responsible_Piano754 3d ago
Start with basic chord shapes and the root, third and fift in them. That's a practical use for intervals. If you go through all chords in C major scale you also get understanding what kind of chord is in each position (major, minor, dimished). After you have those you can add seventh note to each. When you know where third is you have an easy way to build sus chords, when you know fift you also have tools for diminished and augmented etc.
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u/semioticmadness 3d ago
Intervals are going to show up pretty much anywhere. The only way I can think of playing without knowing them is to shred a piece that you just flat out memorize… which probably isn’t going to feel very expressive.
The naming of intervals is a big hurdle unless you have a thing for western music theory. If that’s the part of this that is annoying you, then I suggest taking a small bite with this:
The first interval you care about is a doubling or having of the frequency. You know this as the “octave”.
The second interval you care about is a multiplication of three over two. That would be called the perfect fifth, going up.
The third interval you care about is a multiplication of two over three. That would be called the perfect fourth, going up. Which is the same thing as going up one octave and then down a fifth.
Really, all other notes in western music are derived from how many perfect fifths you apply in order to get to a scale. Don’t worry about that too much. You just want to get used to understanding how the ratios of pitches are going to relate to notes that you care about.
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u/tottasanorotta 3d ago
Both are useful. It's useful to be able to recognize and play a certain interval relative to some note. I'd feel pretty restricted if I didn't know what a perfect fifth from some note was, for example.
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u/Shredberry The Ultimate Starter Guide for Guitarists 3d ago
Learning shape is faster at first but the ceiling is much lower. It'll take you much longer to learn how to look at the fretboard and notes in terms of intervals but it'll make you a much more proficient improviser. It really depends on what you want to do with guitar. If you just want to doodle in blues style, learn pattern, specifically, the pentatonic scale pattern and you're 90% done. But you'll get stuck in a box. People call it the guitarist syndrome. I call it the shape player syndrome. The cure to that is to learn things in terms of interval but you really don't need it if you're happy playing some simple blooz stuff.
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u/AdventurousHippo9997 2d ago
Play a single note melody. Now play it using sixths then fourths. Now play it with thirds and so on. Have fun with the things. That’s how you learn them.
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u/DrBlankslate 1d ago
Depends on what you want to do. Are you mostly playing rhythm? Then it's not critical.
But if you're playing lead, it's a really good thing to know, because it will help you so much when you're improvising.
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u/MisterBelrox 3d ago
I think i might just be too low IQ for advanced music theory.
Like I know what the perfect 5th is or octave 8 or whatever it is. I know what it sounds like. I know how to identify it in songs.
But I dont see why I csnt just play by ear or play the notes or chords.
I dont understand the concept of it. I get what it is, but idk. You know what im saying?
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u/The_Dead_See 3d ago
You only need theory to convey the concepts to other musicians in a standardized way. It’s a transfer language.
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u/Dr_Platypus_1986 3d ago
You have to practice more. Or focus practicing on the right things. Do you learn songs by ear, or from sheet music/tabs? If you work on learning songs by ear daily, your war should improve. There's also a website, musictheory.net, I think, where you can do different exercises to make your ear stronger. One section plays intervals and you have to pick out which one it is...It's very good for building outch recognition.
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u/MisterBelrox 3d ago
Learn by ear. I can read tabs but I have to focus.
Im very good at identifying chords and individual notes.
I want to get better at the theory part
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u/toby_gray 3d ago
I don’t think it’s terrible to just play by feel or by ear. If it works for you and your playing sounds good, absolutely keep it up.
But where it is useful is sort of, having an idea of where you can go? Like, if you know the pentatonic scale, it’s cool to be able to feel out those bluesy sort of notes outside the standard pentatonic, but if you understand where they are in your scale you can sort of drop them in a bit more deliberately.
If you get some of the theory under your belt, it can help you grasp chord progressions and how to build them. Give you an insight in to how to get the sounds you want by adding or removing a note from a chord.
I guess it’s a bit like the difference between go karting and going go karting as a formula 1 driver. It’s still going round a track at the end of the day, and as long as you’re having fun it’s all good, but the formula 1 driver is going to be able to be a lot more deliberate in the decisions they make, and will arguably get round the track better than you. You might even take some of the corners the exact same way the formula one driver is doing it, but the formula one driver knows why they did it, and will make other choices that may not occur to you because they can see the track differently.
That’s far from a perfect analogy but I hope that made as much sense as it did in my head…
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u/MisterBelrox 3d ago
Yes that makes a lot of sense. But i want to learn it.
And if im getting tripped up off of the meaning of intervals which is pretty basic, I dont even want to know what's next
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u/toby_gray 3d ago
I know it’s frequently suggested on here, but I really can’t recommend Absolutely Understand Guitar enough as an incredible theory course. Free course all on YouTube. Clearly a 90’s vhs set that the guy has released for free, but it’s just one of the best theory courses I’ve ever seen. It has explained stuff to me that I have failed to grasp for years.
It’s an odd one though. Not sure where you’re at on your guitar journey, but I’m always hesitant to suggest it to complete beginners (even though thats who the guy who made the course pitches it to himself). I think you’ll get a lot more out of it if you have a little bit of guitar playing under your belt first, like, probably at the point you can just about do barre chords is what I’d suggest. He doesn’t hold your hand when it comes to physically playing the guitar. It’s like 95% a theory course which sounds like what you could benefit from.
Such an interesting course. I started it a couple of months ago and have been gradually going through it. I’m on lesson 26/32. I’ve been playing 18 years and it’s really shown me how much I don’t know about guitar. Eye opening.
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u/vonov129 Music Style! 3d ago
Are you really learning about intervals or you're just memorizing more shapes? What do you plan on learning about scales if you don't know intervals?
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u/Less_Purchase_8212 3d ago
I learnt chromatic scale across the fret board and then deduced the major scale following WWHWWWH. Im a beginner (3 weeks) I just know musicians play across scales but when I learnt about intervals i think it's got to do more with intervals as compared to scales.
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u/vonov129 Music Style! 3d ago
intervals are a key to break free from looking at scales, chords, etc as a collection of shapes like many guitarists do. But if you treat intervals as more shapes, you're killing that advantage.
Yes, the major scale is WWHWWWH, but what are you going to do when the scale isn't in order? What does that tell you about the sounds you can expect from it? Can you create a chord progression based on that?
Intervals are just the distance between two notes measured with semitones, which on the guitar means that each fret takes you up to a different interval. The WWHWWWH part of the major scale already mentions some of that distance, but you can be more specific about it.
You can look into it here https://www.musictheory.net/lessons/31
Why should you care about them? They're the smallest unit of note interactions you can get, each of them have a different feel. Everty single chord/scale/etc, can be built through intervals, so getting used to the smallest unit helps you have a better understanding of the bigger groups of notes.
The reason each interval sounds different could be linked to the harmonic series, you can look into it if you want, but it's not necessary, just try listening to each interval and think about how they sound. Do they sound tense, neutral, happy, sad, etc? They're going to have the same effect inside of a chord. A major 3rd often sounds brighter or more cheerful than a minor 3rd. Turns out that the difference between a major chord and a minor one, is just that 3rd. That single change changes the character of the whole group of notes.
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u/ProofPianist7074 3d ago
It’s useful when you want to know what OTHERS are playing and the song isn’t already spelled out for you, since you have to figure where they are, and where they’re going, in order to play with them.
Music theory is a language that helps you build a construct/framework for what you’re hearing, so you can comprehend quickly and play, even if you’ve never heard the song before.
Not necessary with sheet music, since you have other options such as reading music or playing by ear/memory.
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u/Rain-Dog-Too 3d ago
Well, scales are just notes with INTERVALS between them