Hey, how you doing? Justin here.
Welcome to aural training stage 3!
Now, it's about to get a little bit more difficult.
I kind of warned you at the end of last lesson,
you need to make sure that you've got those intervals,
the 2nd, 4th and 5th, really comfy
before you get into these ones.
These intervals are a little bit bigger.
We're now checking out the major 6th and the major 7th interval.
Now, not only are they a bit bigger,
but there's a lot less songs with these intervals
and they're a little harder to recognise.
So it takes a bit more pracice.
Now, if you haven't been doing so already,
you really need to make sure that you practice playing these intervals
and, excuse me, if you can sing along with them as well.
There's something about singing along with an interval
that helps you internalise the sound of it.
You know, puts the vibrations that are involved kind of in your body.
So it makes them easier to recognise.
So, let's start off with the major 6th interval.
The major 6th interval sounds like this:
. . .
It's not many songs that have this major 6th sound.
The one that I think is probably the most commonly known is My Way.
[and now, the end is near, and so I've reached]
That part of the song is jumping up a major 6th interval.
. . .
Play it a lot of times, practice singing along.
. . .
Trying get that sound of that interval into your head.
Now, the other interval we're looking up today
(well actually we've got two more, one's just so basic I kinda brush over it a lot)
the major 7th interval:
. . .
Now, I don't even know of any songs that start with the major 7th interval.
It's kind of (plays), it's a bit dissonant.
. . .
There's a few that kind of drop down to of those.
Somewhere Over The Rainbow is the one that I always think of.
[Some-where, ov-] That's it, that's the maj7th interval.
[Some-where]
Now, that is the other interval we're talking about today
which is an octave.
. . .
It's actually the same note,
it's going form C (plays) right the way up to another C.
All the way up the major scale.
. . .
Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do
do-do
It's going from do to do.
That's called an octave.
. . .
Shouldn't have too much trouble with that one.
. . .
Major 7th
. . .
is an octave (plays)
and then it drops down a semitone (plays).
But you can practice singing it as well.
Just go: (sings).
Again, it's a good thing.
It takes a little bit more practice to sing these bigger intervals.
They're a little bit harder, but don't, you know,
just cause it's a little bit difficult don't let it put you off.
Just stick at it, takes a little bit more practice - that's all.
. . .
Other songs that actually are slightly cooler one than Somewhere Over The Rainbow
is the Immigrant Song.
. . .
The Led Zeppelin.
. . .
There's the major 7th.
It's going up an octave then major 7th.
. . .
Not that many songs that use this interval.
So there are the ones to listen out for, to get used to.
In some way they're easy to recognise because they're so big
and because (plays) they're kind of unique sounding.
. . .
For now.
Later on we're going to start adding in other intervals around them
that kind of sound a bit similar.
That gets a little bit tricky.
So, the ones that you're listening for now are:
. . .
My Way - major 6th interval
. . .
We're after major 7th.
. . .
Also as well as having the Somewhere Over The Rainbow and the Immigrants Song
I always think it's kind of, it's pulling up a bit.
. . .
So it's just going: it's dragging up to the octave
. . .
See if you can kind of feel that as you play it.
Play it yourself
. . .
and feel that note, it's kind of pulling you up there,
. . .
wants to resolve.
The reason is cause it's quite dissonant (plays).
If you play those two notes together:
. . .
It's kind of, it's not out of tune, it's dissonant (plays).
close together (plays).
That's the major 7th.
. . .
And the octave.
Somewhere over the rainbow
. . .
Same note.
Ok, let me show you how to play these intervals first,
of course if you practice playing them, sing along and/or play them for your buddy
and/or play them to make your own kind of aural test as well.
So let's get to a close up now and have a look at that.
Ok, so here's the first one, this is the major 6th interval.
. . .
So this one's over two strings and back one fret.
. . .
That's the major 6th.
. . .
Now we want major 7th
. . .
which is two strings over and one fret up.
. . .
And we've also need to know octave
. . .
which is two strings over, two frets up.
Also like a power chord (plays),
if we played a regular power chord like that,
that's where your little finger is, it's on the octave.
So the power chord is a fifth and an octave.
. . .
Ok, don't forget of course that all of these intervals shapes
are found on the cheat sheet on the web site, so go and check that out.
It's time for our aural test!
So, we're going to be, in the first test, looking at:
major 6th, major 7th and ocatves only.
There's going to be ten questions.
Let's go!
Each one is going to be played twice.
Here we go! First one:
. . .
And here's question 2:
. . .
Question 3:
. . .
Question 4:
. . .
Question 5:
. . .
Question 6:
. . .
Question 7:
. . .
Question 8:
. . .
Question 9:
. . .
Question 10:
. . .
Ok, you might want to go and check your answers for that,
make sure you're doin' okay,
before we crack into 3B.
We're now looking at:
major 2nd, major 3rd, perfect 4th, perfect 5th,
major 6th and major 7th and octave
which is all the notes in the major scale.
It's quite a lot.
It's going to take a little bit of practice.
Don't be too discouraged if you don't get them all right straight away.
Maybe you do, maybe you've got natural gift for hearing this stuff -
- excellent! Really, really good!
Some poeple get this real quick,
some people fight with it a little while,
but everyone gets it in the end,
just takes a bit of practice.
Ok, here we go for 3B!
Question 1:
. . .
Question 2:
. . .
Question 3:
. . .
Question 4:
. . .
Question 5:
. . .
Question 6:
. . .
Question 7:
. . .
Question 8:
. . .
Question 9:
. . .
And question 10:
. . .
Well, time to go and check your answers now on the web site.
Hope that you've done well with that.
Couple of little other little hints for you that you might find helpful.
One: close your eyes.
Generally, if you turn sight off, hearing gets better.
So if you're doing interval ear training
generally looking around the room is not such a great thing.
You should just have your eyes closed.
I find sometimes that if I'm doing this kind of aural training
that closing my eyes and imagining like a guitar neck
and trying to see where I put my fingers to make that sound
can be quite helpful.
You shouldn't be using a guitar for this kind of interval training,
should just be using your ears.
Using a guitar it's kind of cheating, you know,
it makes it a little bit easier, cause you can kind of go:
. . .
Oh, it's that one!
You know, and that's not really the point.
The point is to really fine-tune your ears now.
So, hopefully that was ok.
That's a big step there, to be able to do this level now
where you can do all of the notes in C.
Make sure that you understand where it come from and stuff,
that it's the scale, practice playing it.
I can't recommend like... now I'm going on about it a bit,
but there's a couple of singing excercises in the aural training section of my web site
that really helpful for this if you're struggling a bit.
So, hope that was fun and hope you'll join me for stage 4
where we start looking at intervals that are non-diatonic,
that don't come from the major scale.
See you again some time real soon.
Bye-bye!