Preparing for your Royal Conservatory of Toronto exam? Here’s how you can work on identifying intervals for your ear test.
If you look in the syllabus, you will see which intervals you are expected to know for which level.
Now there is an option during the exam to either identify the interval or to sing it when they give you the beginning note, but I personally feel like it’s way easier to identify, so I always get my students to identify, especially since not all students are comfortable with singing. So that’s what we will be looking at here.
There are a couple of different ways of identifying intervals.
When I was a student myself as a child, I was taught to use a song that would help you figure out what the interval sounds like or to help you kind of recognise which one it is.
For example, a major 6th sounds like the beginning 2 notes of ‘My bonny is over the ocean’, or a minor 3rd sounds like the beginning 2 notes of O Canada.
I don’t really like using this method because you basically have to memorise a long list of songs which correspond to each interval, and if you mix them up, then you’ll easily be wrong. It can also be hard to find enough songs that you know well enough to use for every interval! For example for a minor 2nd you might be able to use Jaws, but if you’ve never seen Jaws it doesn’t help you at all.
So my preferred method is one where you can actually figure it out yourself, because once you know the method you can never forget it and you can figure out any interval no matter the size. And the more that you practise figuring it out, the quicker you’ll be, and then eventually you’ll just know them, at least the most common ones.
Figuring out the interval
The examiner will play one note after another. Sing it in your head, and then count the number of notes that are in between by following the melody of a major scale. (You should be able to do this easily. If you can’t… PRACTISE YOUR SCALES).
(You should be doing that anyway.)
(Seriously, practise your scales.)
I always use a major scale, because if you sing up the 2nd note, and it’s the same note, then that’s a major interval. If you sing and it seems like the 2nd note is between 2 notes, then it’s a minor interval. It’s one semi tone lower than what the major would have been.
To begin with while practising, just sing the intervals out loud so you can hear what you’re doing. Then as you get better, start to sing it in your head as you won’t be able to sing it out loud at your exam!
Aside from practising identifying intervals, it’s a good idea to play different intervals to yourself often as well. That way your ear will get used to what they sound like and the distance that they are.
Extra tricks
A great way to quickly recognise 3rds (which are really common) is using your arpeggios (that hopefully you’ve been diligently practising!) I love using arpeggios because the 1st two notes are a major 3rd, the 2nd and 3rd notes are a minor 3rd, and the 3rd and 4th note are a perfect 4th. You also practise them going up and down so that will help you recognise the intervals in both directions.
So if you hear an interval and it sounds like the beginning part of a major arpeggio, immediately you will know it’s a major 3rd. If it sounds like the middle part of an arpeggio, it’s a minor 3rd, and so on. When I hear an interval, if I can fit it into where it is in the arpeggio in my head, and then it’s an easy one.
Another easy interval to recognise is a perfect 5th, because as violinists, all our strings are in 5ths. So if you have been tuning your violin or even hearing your teacher tune your violin, the distance between the strings are always 5ths. So any interval that you hear that sounds like tuning, is a 5th.
Watch the video above for examples of how to sing the intervals, and let me know below if you have any questions!