Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Intervals Explained

In last week's Tuesday and Wednesday tips we talked about intervals like 3rds, 6ths, 5ths and so on. Okay, okay... I was writing for people who knew some music theory. So in today's TIP I'm going to provide a little background info to help the non-music-theorists 'decode' those tips.

Let's start with the major scale, which you know as "Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do." If you aren't familiar with that scale, you might need more musical help than I can give you in a TIP (i.e., find someone to learn from IN PERSON).

Start by numbering each of those tones. Do = 1, Re = 2, Mi = 3, so we could sing: "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8" instead of the weird sylables. The interval between the root, or "1", and the third, or "3", is called a third. The interval between the "1" and the "5" is called a fifth. Get the picture?

Well, it is more complicated than this in truth, as there are different flavors of 3rds or 5ths... but on the kalimba we can ignore that much of the time.

So now can you see that going from the 2 note to the 4 note is also a 3rd, as is the interval between the 3 and the 5, or the 4 and the 6? You can do this same trick for 4ths, or 5ths, or any interval. I think of it as walking up a ladder. A third is a short person walking up the ladder, with their feet and their hands holding onto rungs, skipping one rung in the middle. A fourth is a taller person, skipping two rungs. A fifth is taller still, skipping three rungs (i.e., if feet are on 1 and hands are on 5, you skip the 2, 3, and 4 rungs - then start going up the ladder, to the 2 and 6 rungs, skipping 3, 4, and 5).