How to Learn Major and Minor Musical Intervals
In the previous lesson we learned that the perfect intervals apply only to unisons, 4ths, 5ths, and octaves. In this lesson, I’ll show you methods for learning the major and minor intervals, which apply only to 2nds, 3rds, 6ths, and 7ths.
The Major/Minor Intervals
Method One
There are no matching accidental patterns for learning the major and minor intervals, as there are with the perfect intervals. A pattern exists, but unfortunately, it’s too complex to be beneficial as a learning tool. So instead, I’ll start with a very simple truth about major and minor intervals:
- Minor intervals are always exactly one half step smaller than major intervals.
All of the major intervals are easily derived from a major scale, using 
as the starting point:
Now if we make each interval a half step smaller, we have all of the minor intervals as well. The diagram below shows major intervals paired with minor intervals melodically and harmonically:
Again, this method works well as long as you are fluent with all of the major scales. There also is a way to relate the minor intervals with the minor scale, but It doesn’t work quite as well as the method above.
Method Two
As with the perfect intervals, we simply can memorize the number of half steps between the two notes of a musical interval. And as I said in the last lesson, even though this method might seem tedious, it’s a good checkpoint for complex intervals, and I believe it gives you the most complete understanding of intervallic structure.
The diagram below shows an example of each of the major and minor intervals on a staff, on a keyboard, and the number of half steps for each. I have certain intervals paired in rows so you can see that one interval is an inversion of the other. See if you can figure out from the diagram what I mean by inversion. I’ll explain it in detail in the next lesson.
Take some time now to review this lesson and the last one. Study the music you are practicing on your instrument to see if you now can identify the intervals by numerical value and quality. And please, as you are playing and listening to music, pay attention to the sounds of the intervals. Can you hear their tendencies? I haven’t discussed learning to hear the intervals, but will do that in the context of real music later. The goal of these lessons is recognizing visually and writing the intervals.
In the next lesson I’ll discuss augmented and diminished intervals, the ever-famous tritone, and interval inversion.
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A Word about Interval Ear Training
I have considered developing online ear training exercises so readers could practice learning the sounds of the intervals. Years ago, I developed an ear training program that my students used at Vanguard University. Since I’m not much of a programmer anymore, and because there are already so many great programs out there, I’ve decided against going that route. However, I will be discussing interval sounds quite a bit, and giving you tips on how to learn them. A program that I highly recommend, and have used for years is Practica Musica (available for Windows and Mac OS). I believe it is the best ear training software on the market, and you can purchase it here:
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