Harmony | Steps & Intervals

Scales and intervals are the building blocks of harmony. They are the constructs on how chords are built and how you learn, building your theoretical and practical skills. Before we look closer at scales and intervals, we must first define what half and whole steps are.

Half & Whole Steps / Semitones & Tones

A half step is the smallest distance between any two notes found in western music. On a piano, a half step is any two consecutive piano keys. Looking at the keyboard, we can deduce that most half steps are between white and black notes, except between the two white notes of E and F and between B and C. Half steps are also referred to as chromatic steps or semitone.

A whole step is two half steps. A whole step is also referred to as a  tone step.

Below illustrates consecutive half and whole steps from C. Scales and intervals are the building blocks of harmony. They are the constructs on how chords are built and how you learn, building your theoretical and practical skills. Before we look closer at scales and intervals, we must first define what half and whole steps are.

Intervals

An interval is the distance between any two notes. They have established names that enable succinct identification in both academic, practical, and musical collaborative settings. Musicians use intervals to identify and distinguish chord qualities from each other and are the basis to scrutinize harmonic relationships.

The TONIC is the 1st tone or starting point of a scale; for example, in the C major scale, the tonic is the C, in the F major scale, F is the tonic, etc. Below are the various intervals and extensions of a scale or chord. The example below uses C as the tonic. An extension is any interval above the seventh interval, from eight to the thirteenth.

Chords are identified by recognizing the specific intervals they are composed of. As you learn a chord, voicing, scale, or mode, it is beneficial to understand the relationships of the various intervals that make up the specific musical structure. This practice of identifying interval relationships will highlight common patterns within music and exponentially strengthen how you understand and approach music. Understanding how intervals relate to each other will allow a player to easily choose and avoid note combinations for specific sounds and moods within improvisation.

Being able to immediately identify what note a given interval is based on another will enable efficient learning.

For example, knowing the b7 of Ab is Gb, or the #4 of G is C#, or the 3rd of D is F# should be an immediate process. If you put off this skill, navigating theory, song charts, and improvisation will be a substantially more laborious and long-winded process. Each time you need to pause and decipher, a chord or alteration will intrude on your flow. Take a jazz standard made up of many 7th chords; if you are struggling to work out what the 3rd or the 7th interval is for every chord, then learning a song just got a lot more challenging. Using flashcards to help with this recollection is incredibly beneficial