June 12, 2015: Eddie Vaan Shaw plays his custom triple-neck guitar at the Chicago Blues Festival. In music theory, the term interval is used to measure the distance between two notes, like an inch,...
June 12, 2015: Eddie Vaan Shaw plays his custom triple-neck guitar at the Chicago Blues Festival.
In music theory, the term interval is used to measure the distance between two notes, like an inch, mile or light year with objects. Our entire system of harmony in Western music is based on intervals and a standard calibration of them that was devised a few hundred years ago.
Known as equal temperament, the system uniformly divides an octave, which is two pitches, one being twice the radiofrequency of the other (for example, A440 Hertz and A220Hz), into 12 evenly spaced notes, each of which is a semitone, or half step (the equivalent of one fret on the guitar), above and below the next higher and lower note. In this lesson, I offer a comprehensive primer on the topic of intervals, designed to give beginner- and intermediate-level guitarists from any stylistic background a solid grasp on one of the foundational cornerstones of music, acquire a practical working knowledge and vocabulary of intervals and become a more informed and enlightened player, composer/arranger, improviser and teacher.
MAJOR-SCALE INTERVALS
The term diatonic means scale-based, so diatonic intervals are intervals that live within, or are native to, a scale. Due to its simplicity and user-friendliness, we’ll use the C major scale (C D E F G A B), which is made up of seven different “natural” notes (no sharps or flats), as a starting point in our study of intervals.
FIGURE 1 shows the scale played entirely on one string, the A string, which offers a good “number line” view and perspective to begin our study, just like learning math in grade school. As you play through the example, notice that every note is identified and