 Hi guys, this is Jason Zak from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, a year training lesson, we are going to look at how you can study and acknowledge and recognize and sing and practice all the words with respect to intervals, however, in real time. Real time means in context with a piece of music and with a piece of music, there's always going to be drums, harmony, melody of course. So it's all going to be hurled at you together. This is the real world. So the idea I have or the argument I have is why not always do intervals or any skill? Why not train your ear this way? This is how the world of music training would have been before technology, before all these fancy year training apps and all that, which I honestly feel doesn't help solve the problem of figuring things out. If you hear a major six, then if you can't identify it, I don't think an app is going to help you to be completely honest. And I don't think you need to scrutinize it so much to just play that one note and then it's going to force you to get it maybe. And there's another kind of tool going around or another cheat code, which many people call it, saying that, oh, if you know this song, you're probably going to get the major second through that song or if you know the first two notes of Twinkle, Twinkle, you're probably going to know perfect fifths for life. The truth is no. You're not going to know that for life. You need to always know these intervals in context. There are some intervals which can be song based. For example, maybe somewhere over the rainbow, somewhere, which has a very obvious octave and that's easy to recognize. If ever you want to sing an octave, I would always encourage a song like somewhere over the rainbow. But as the intervals cross or go very close to each other, if it's seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths, and even sixths, you can't just get it with songs. The song approach will not work. It's just a cool, it's a nice thing to say. You know, the first two notes of a song are a major second. But is that going to train your ear to know the major second? I don't think so. And is an app which will isolate the problem, which is to figure out the interaction between two notes. Ultimately, an interval is the vibe created when two notes collide with each other. First of all, this vibe or this collision can be melodic in the sense that it's one by one, one after the other. It could also be a harmonic collision where both the notes happen together. Each of those have to be felt differently. And within the melodic intervals, you'll have the ascending melodic and the descending melodic. So with an app, it's going to give you all these permutations in a very sort of stepwise, chapter-based methodology where I think that education system fails completely because you need to put it all together. You need to listen to the whole song and do it old school. Old school is the actual school, I think, when it comes to learning music or at least music education, where all the great composers in history have trained themselves with music, with just the song and maybe with reading the song. So either sheet reading or the actual song and ever since we had the option to go and watch concerts or ever since we have a disc or some kind of a player to listen to music, we can learn the song from the source. Why do we need to learn the song through other mediums like an app or other such things? Yes, an app might help to give you the exact thing which you're searching for. An app can help you to kind of freeze the song, slow down the song, but the app won't actually help you to get that interval. And the other reason, you may also ask, why do I need to train my ear? Why do I need to figure this stuff out? Why should I care about a major second? Everyone just says it's important to figure out an interval like a tritone or a perfect fourth. But if it is important, why is it important? The reason being not just to learn songs by ear but also to compose songs which can be played in your ear or played in your head and then it's just a technical job of bringing it out on your principal instrument, be it piano, violin, guitar or whatever. So in a nutshell, in this lesson, we are going to look at a few cases or a few intervals and then I will have my handwritten notes which are available on Patreon. You can download a copy, it's a PDF file which will give you a bunch of permutations and a bunch of scenarios and the way we've written it down theoretically as well will benefit you a lot. Okay guys, so let's learn how to sing, identify and figure out intervals using just our ears in real world scenarios and practicing it in context. So let's get cracking with the lesson before we do, it will be awesome if you could hit that subscribe button and hit the bell icon for regular notifications. So the strategy I have for this entire lesson is going to be play a chord and you don't have to do this with a song, you can do this with your piano and your voice. So you have to sing something with respect to that chord and the two chords we are going to have for you throughout this lecture is going to be F major, F A C and F minor, F A flat C. When we practice intervals, we'll practice with respect to the F major chord and with respect to the F minor chord. With F major, this chord will support a lot of work which you will do over the bigger scale which is F major. So if you play that, you can play the whole scale pretty effortlessly and that chord seems to serve well. However, if you play an F minor, that chord will be a good cushion or a good support for the F minor scale, which is this. Or maybe even the F Dorian scale which has a raised 6 with respect to the natural or the harmonic minor which has a raised 7th with respect to the natural or maybe even the melodic minor which has a raised 6 and 7. So that minor chord is serving as a good support. Similarly, a major chord could also serve as a good support for maybe a Lydian scale which is major scale with a sharp 4. It could also serve as a mix of Lydian support. Of course, you could play 7th chord in your piano. Now all of the melodic stuff is going to come from our voice and just to revise or recap, there are two ways we are going to sing these intervals. We are going to sing it melodically ascending and sing it melodically descending. So an example would be if you have to play the F major chord and you have to sing the intervals melodically. The first thing I would like you to now try is to sing F and G and you are not allowed to play F and G on the piano. The challenge here is you are allowed to play only the F major chord and you have to try and sing F G which is that's F G ascending F G is a major second right F G let's do a descending G G F when you feel that you need to check your answer or if you feel very stuck you could do you don't you don't need to play the tune but if you tell yourself I am singing G maybe you could whack G isolate the G sing that and now don't use the piano anymore it'll rather be F G so you could maybe use an add 9 chord like this which is a which is an F major over G F G G F and what are you doing now you're practicing a major second with respect to F so G is the major second F is the root but also scale up the octave which is normal or when you're singing always try to sing over two octaves which is a minimum requirement if you ask me and all of us can sing at least two octaves so the first thing we did was sing F G and then G F but we need to realize that the major second does not only occur from the root to the second of that scale or that chord it can be with respect to any note or any two notes from that respective scale and you'll realize in the F major scale what are my major second groupings or what are my major second intervals remember that good old formula to form a major scale in the first place 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 what is the 2 the 2 is a major second what is the one the one is a minor second so if you just remember that the first to the second is a major 2 that's F G then you have a GA can write that down now A to B flat is a minor second you can write that down maybe in a different color if you wish then B flat to C is a still a major second but 4 to 5 perfect 4 to perfect 5 with respect to F but with respect to each other they are a major second with respect to each other then CD DE and then E F which is a major second in terms of our intervals if I sing them with the swaras it will be Saray 1 2 then regga 2 3 then we do Mapa B flat C 4 5 father 5 6 CD and then DE if that's too high for you DE DE DE DE which will be your it's a bit too low and then you go the minor seconds are also there there are two minor seconds in every major scale and in every minor scale so that will be A B flat B flat A B flat A B flat A B flat A B flat A and then we have E F knee is your 7 knee saw E F just to give you an idea about the Swara saw is the one of the scale raise the two girls the three so it's a great tool if you've studied Indian classical music or if you want to because they train you in such a way that these notes get printed in your brain with respect to the saw so you're never going to lose sight of the root so the Indian systems of training always keep your roots fixed in the brain and it gives you that strong confidence to go above and beyond that route and do all sorts of patterns and even rhythmically it always gives you a feel of the time signature and over that you experiment and you create your improvisations okay so what was the the gist of the exercise now practice all your major seconds with respect to the F major chord and how do you practice by singing by not playing playing on the piano is not your training your training is when you sing and this is what a lot of people get wrong with your training we think that your training is identifying oh I heard that no it's singing you have to sing it then you really get it okay that's the tried and tested way so I'm gonna do all this and walk you through all the major seconds of the F major scale using the F major chord as my real world context now in a song it could still be an F major chord with your hearing but maybe more cause so I'm just gonna simplify with just F major so I don't do AB flat because that's minor right so and then don't forget the descending versions of these major second down DC check maybe yeah I'm kind of right and then and then maybe do the minor seconds now and when you practice it in context if you do AB flat it sounds very unstable but if you do B flat A now it sounds stable because you're ending on a tonic note which is A AB flat hanging in the balance then B flat A resolving but those were the same notes just the A sending in context with the chord sounded dissonant while D sending in context with the chord sounds a consonant or stable while if I do E F which is the other minor second interval E F while F E you see now down minor second is sounding dissonant F E or a tension because you're landing on the major seventh with respect to the root so that's a lot more consonant E F so now we practice all of the intervals with respect to this F major chord I've literally planted it on the ground and everyone revolves around that and it's still major second and minor second intervals if we kind of take our study to another scale I didn't want to just do it on the major so why not explore this using a minor chord which can serve the natural minor the Dorian raise six the harmonic minor raise seventh and the melodic minor which is raise six and raise seven so practice the same equation but you have a minor chord you have a new scale so you'll have a new palette or a new set of major seconds and minor seconds to practice however some of them will repeat like for example F G is also there in F G F major so this further strengthens your goal to practice intervals in context with music rather than just know F G I know major second no you didn't do it with context so you need to do it with music running in the background so I'll give you an F minor chord shape and now let's try and do all the intervals of the minor scale the major major second and the minor second intervals let's do major second F G G F flat P flat F flat P that's now ma pa C B flat and then and then if you do Dorian but if it's natural you won't find that major second it'll be pa which is the tension or they're going to pause more of a resolution so that would be melodic that would be melodic six major seven and then and then then nisa nisa will be melodic but for natural you go nisa sani and both nisa and sani have a different emotional flavor nisa stable sani maybe padha if i do or ma pa very stable ma pa why if i do very bridge like very uncertain i guess versus if you do three stable ma gare sa let's get some minor seconds into the play that'll be re to go for sure always minor second with respect to minor re that's a flat g g a flat g five flat you can even do pa dha for natural check your answer maybe on the piano checking your answer further improves your theory because you have to find the stuff right you're not just singing blind you're you're singing with a lot of knowledge in your brain your brain is saying sing c and d flat it is a minor second it is in the f minor scale it is the power going to the so you know all that that's what you're doing so year training is not just magically getting it and just in yes there is an instinct but it's not magic it's a lot of hard work and a lot of focus and uses a lot of theory ironically music theory and year training are the best friends of each other in music they always need to go hand in hand you do not isolate them and then learn it you bring them together so pa dha dissonant right but that dha that komal dha or that flat six gives you that aeolian flavor or that natural minor flavor while if you do pa dha that's very dorian those notes are very dorian okay and if you do that would make it very melodic melodic minor but that would make it dorian that would make it natural minor and there's one more second which we might have to also do which will be which would be the harmonic minor harmonic minor is the only one of our known popular scales which has a second which is not the major second or the minor second but a stretched out second it's called as an augmented second you might also want to commonly call it a minor third but the official term is to actually say augmented second so major second i'm showing you the intervals the second intervals of a harmonic minor minor minor second major second major second pa dha minor now the beautiful dhani dhani that would be a flat six going to a natural seven or a major seven but the gap is a that's an augmented augmented second that would be a minor two so harmonic minor scale is a tricky one you may want to start with natural and then progress forward okay so what you've observed is me singing all of the minor all of the seconds the major two the minor two and even that augmented two with respect to a chord or with respect to a simple set of two triads which we've learned in the lecture f major and f minor and that's pretty much the exercise you can now go ahead journey forward and expose yourself if you will to thirds we've done seconds thirds for all you might for all you know maybe easier than seconds because thirds are more commonly heard in in life in music so let's give thirds a spin and see how we progress with that same old f major chord and it's important to theoretically write this down so in a major scale you're going to have four minor thirds and three major thirds so the major thirds are going to be at the root one to three second the third the six and the seven will all be minor thirds but the one four to six five to seven will all be major thirds so you need to know which ones are major and which ones are minor and you will feel it when you sing it in context so f major now let's try and get our thirds rather easy because you're singing notes which are in this chord but now minor third C A sounds more familiar right B flat D B flat D if you want to make the chord fit what you're singing B flat D you can do an add B flat D add that in D B flat but don't don't cheat don't play it one by one and then C A C then D those are all your thirds let's now do thirds with respect to minor and let's just get them going first F A flat G B flat A flat C B flat D flat C E flat D flat F E flat G while if you do Dorian F A flat G B flat A flat C B flat D that's the Dorian note C E flat D F D because Dorian F and then E flat G similarly the harmonic which I won't show you now but you get the idea right and once you got these thirds to some level you can play around with them and try and do them in a in a jumbled order you know but while doing so in a jumbled order you should know what you're singing in each occurrence so and by jumble I could do ascending melodic or even descending melodic la da dum da dum dum as you can see E flat F sounds a lot more stable and a lot more neutral than B flat G E flat is a bit normal D B flat a lot more color D B flat because those are not tonic they're not part of the scale right so that's your thirds and then the journey continues with fourths and fifths you just have to remember pretty much all the fourths in a major and a minor natural minor scale are gonna be perfect however in a major scale the fourth degree so F B flat perfect fourth perfect fourth perfect fourth augmented fourth you need to remember just the fourth degree augmented fourth perfect fourth perfect fourth and then you do perfect fifths and just remember the seventh degree of a perfect fifth or of a fifth interval will change to a diminished fifth so perfect fifth perfect fifth perfect fifth perfect fifth perfect fifth diminished fifth diminished fifth perfect fifth perfect fifth are very common for for melody composition so are the other intervals maybe a good use case of perfect fifths maybe in two perfect fifths in one song would be right where it starts with two perfect fifths so you could argue that it's perhaps on a on a lydian to begin of course the composition by John Williams will modally change even more so maybe that that could be a good future video exploring the Jurassic Park theme that'll be fun okay so this is your perfect fifth we've done perfect four augmented fourth so you have to practice singing this stuff but I will warn you that as it crosses from the perfect four to the fifth it's gonna be a lot tricky to sing so find your octave of choice so if you if I demonstrate perfect fifths with context with our f chord f major you may have to go to your head voice or falsetto voice that's your diminished now if you can't sing e b flat you have to develop the skill to then you'll have to come back down the octave e e b flat f c and as it goes beyond the fifths it starts getting a bit tricky right so six will be a job for the voice but you need to train that's the best way to get these things which is why composers don't compose a lot in six because they don't try singing it so if you try singing it you will get it eventually for example somewhere over the rainbow definitely practice six which kind of also goes well with the words of the song so f t then g e a f which is a minor sixth b flat g major sixth c a b flat d b flat if you can't go that high e c e c e c those are all your six now I'll give you a trick while practicing sevens to practice sevens my advice would actually be to play the seventh chords of the scale so f major seventh g minor seventh a minor seventh b flat major seventh c dominant seventh d minor seventh e minor seventh flat five and then f and you'll hear it a lot better so f e by mistake we tend to do f f but then think it's even it's not even though it's a major triad the seventh is actually minor we call it a dominant seventh then another minor seventh and then another minor seventh even though it's a diminished chord it has a minor seventh up top and then back to tonic okay so intervals are a bit tricky as you as they become wider but it's supremely important to train your ear to at least figure out the octave even though it's a wide jump you know be able to go f f somewhere you need to know the octave it'll really help you and maybe transcribing great songs especially jazz standards from from the yester years will help you a lot with transcription and your year year training because a lot of the songs of the past if you take even misty look at me you see the melody is very spread out it's not look at me it's look at me i'm as helpless i'm as helpless you have a beautiful major seventh there i'm as helpless as a kitten on a tree a lot of thirds there and all of these are practiced in different contexts because the chords keep changing so i don't want to scare you but if you're using an app or if you're using you know this cheat code of trying to figure out intervals you've now watched this video so i'm i'm guessing you now know that most of those quick fixes to things will will just not happen it's just like a spray you put if you just to reduce the pain or feel good about something so intervals have to be practiced and given the utmost respect because they are the building blocks of melody and harmony don't take the study of intervals lightly don't think it's gonna just happen overnight it's a process we all do interval practice and if you're a piano player don't forget to sing a lot of piano players get a bit kind of you know annoyed oh why should i sing i'm a piano player let me just play and a lot of more schooled musicians tend to avoid singing because you just want to guess it you feel that identifying it is the outcome or the end goal not at all the end goal is to sing it and singing it out loud doesn't have to happen all the time because as you sing out loud tactically and with knowledge you can start singing in your head also singing in the head is also a skill you will develop by singing out loud and singing in the head you can practice intervals even you know in an aeroplane for example you don't have to disturb anyone you can just imagine everything and practice everything in the brain itself the brain is playing the music even though nothing is actually playing you know so it can get it can become a very very powerful tool so do not take intervals lightly the most important probably the most important chapter to practice in this field and don't go to chords until you've got intervals because intervals are the building blocks of chords so similarly don't go to scales because again intervals are the building blocks of scales so you might as well start with all these important recurring intervals in the day-to-day things we do in music either as a just to practice or to compose to improvise even to improvise you want to if you take that chord what what should you play over that chord a good way to think is maybe i just want to improvise in fourths so you know so i can get that little tune that would not have come if i didn't think of fourths or maybe i want to think in terms of sixths yes i have to know how to play it but i need to know what to play right so you the problem which a lot of us face especially guitarists piano players flottis actually any instrumentalist the instrument is always designed to make linear playing extremely easy you know if you do once you know your fingering once you know your position or shape on a guitar or a violin you fly linearly but if i tell you to play the same thing with skips even if you look at me playing i've slowed myself down so playing things linearly or what we call in music a shredding is quite easy to do because it's more physical you just have to train your muscles the in the real world to hear this and to imagine it and then play it is not so easy so that's something you need to work on so hope you found the lesson useful and hope it can help you with your journey or goals as a as an artist and if you like the lesson do consider giving the video a like leaving us a comment with what you thought and maybe you have a suggestion for a lesson in the future and ear training is a very structured and a very organic long drawn kind of process if you'd like to learn ear training it's one of my favorite subjects as it as a music teacher over the years and i'll be happy to train you in person you can fill up a form in our description and reach out to one of the course advisors and we'll try and plan a module for you and if you don't have the time to come into one of my classrooms virtually or offline in Bangalore you can also look consider our structured video courses on nathanielschool.com slash video courses where you'll get ear training and it's an ever-growing library or vault of lessons which we put out regularly right guys thanks a ton for watching the video cheers and catch you in the next one