How We Hear Music
“Music is the space between the notes.” – Miles Davis
PERFECT PITCH is the ability to recognize the sound of individual notes the way most people see colors. It’s estimated that only 1 in 10,000 people have this ability.
Unless you have this rare ability, you are like me and most other people; you have RELATIVE PITCH, which means you are actually hearing music as the space between the notes.
When we hear any single note from our alphabet, whether a C or C# or G or Bb, we don’t have enough musical context to determine whether something is Major or Minor, happy or sad, etc.…. a single note is neutral.
The single note is not very exciting, right?
When a second note is introduced, something magical happens. We actually start hearing the space between the notes, or more accurately, the distance between them.
In music, we don’t just have to follow the order of the musical alphabet; we can skip over notes of the alphabet to create different distances between notes.
We use the word INTERVAL to describe the distance between a set of notes. These intervals are the deciding factor on how notes will sound together and give us varying colors, emotions, and moods. The most common examples of intervals are Major intervals or Minor intervals.
Below are two different INTERVALS, meaning two different distances between notes. Both examples BEGIN on the same note.
The first pair of notes listed above as a “Major Interval” sounds decidedly brighter or happier, while the latter pair listed as a “Minor Interval” sounds darker or sadder. In all, there are 12 intervals in a standard octave or one time through our 12-note alphabet.
We musicians can (and DO) learn to recognize these intervals by ear, which is called Ear Training. Ear Training is one of the main components of learning the Number System as a musician.
On the next page, we’ll learn about our first Intervals: The Half Step (minor) and the Whole Step (major).