# I struggle with singing these intervals



## clavichorder

I am attempting to internalize and be able to sing every interval in the octave. I am puzzled as to why tritones, especially when I go down a tritone as opposed to up, seem to fall in some zone where it ends up being like a 5th or a 4th, like some quarter tone-ish thing. Also, minor and major sixths, though I know the difference in feel very well, seem to land on some pitch in between even when going up if I don't concentrate really hard. 7ths and all other intervals are no problem, though minor and major thirds sometimes trick me in certain contexts.

So, this is also a question of ear training and singing. I want to be able to do it closer to how an instrument would. I want to be able to hear the tone rows in my head with greater agility and not losing my place.


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## Meaghan

You can "cheat" by picking a song or piece you know that starts with each interval. This is what I did to recognize intervals before I had internalized all of them. For the ones you named, I used "Maria" from _West Side Story_ for tritones, "My Bonny Lies over the Ocean" for major sixths, and the beginning of the _vorspiel_ to _Tristan und Isolde_ for minor sixths.


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## clavichorder

^^^I may ultimately have to do that. Other than that I guess its just practice?

Are you able to go down a minor 6th at will without thinking too hard? I want to be able to do those difficult ones. To me, there is a big difference between up and down.


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## Cnote11

I too struggle singing these notes.


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## Barelytenor

Every singer struggles with tritones, I believe, unless they have perfect pitch or unless it's easily heard in the prevailing harmony. If any. I too use "Maria" for the upward tritone. For downward I just try to think of singing a downward fourth and then the semitone below resolving to the fourth. Speaking of Leonard Bernstein, the tune "I'd like to be in America" is wonderful for singing/visualizing "3 against 2" rhythmic passages (1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1 and 2 and 3 and). Buona fortuna!


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## Operadowney

In our aural skills program at university, the profs suggested that we use tunes to memorize intervals. That's the way out society learns now. I don't see anything wrong with it.


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## Moira

Operadowney said:


> In our aural skills program at university, the profs suggested that we use tunes to memorize intervals. That's the way out society learns now. I don't see anything wrong with it.


I think that is the way most of us learn them. It is certainly the method I was taught.


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## Orange Soda King

Here is a way to practice that helps me a lot:

Step 1:
-Sing a note, sing up a perfect 5th, and then sing down a half step.
-Sing a note, sing down a perfect 5th, and then sing up a half step.
-Sing a note, sing a half step down, then sing up a perfect fifth.
-Sing a note, sing a half step up, then sing down a perfect fifth.

Step 2:
-Sing a note and IMAGINE a perfect fifth up in your mind as hard as you can. While singing the note, imagine the fifth going down a half step. If you have that note in your mind, try to go up and sing it.
-Sing a note and IMAGINE the perfect fifth down in your mind as hard as you can. While singing the note, imagine the fifth going up a half step. If you have the note in your mind, try to go down and sing it.

Keep practicing both of these, and you should slowly train your ear to hear tritones better.


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## PetrB

Hope I'm not too late to help here....


Ditch that old song advice, trouble with those, like the acronyms for learning notes on the staff, is remnants of 'the rest of it' past your more immediate needs will forever clutter your brain, and no matter how fast your brain may eventually work those tunes or acronyms, it is still going '1.0.0.111.0.1.00 instead of 1.0 =

Tritone -- ascending or descending -- first note, then sing a diminished triad - this shortcuts much more readily to the outside interval than a fragment from a tune. Without fussing about 'just intonation' or several beats of tuning, that will get that interval's sound 'set' in your inner ear, you will very soon be able to skip the intermediary minor third and sing the interval 
'straight.' -- about as uncluttered and free of unnecessary context as it gets.

But back to the more 'fussy' and accurate tunings, and theory as taught - a tritone on paper is always an augmented fourth and never a diminished fifth: the spelling is not that of the diminished fifth, as sung in your proposed preliminary drill, i.e. ascending will be C - F#, not C - Gb 

Tweak your major and minor thirds by drilling yourself on diminished and augmented triads.

Again, for the Sixths, preliminary exercise of singing a major or minor triad up and down in its inversions, eventually again, focusing on the inversion with the sixth, and eventually 'skipping over' the middle pitch.

These are about the least encumbered way to go about it, the most economic practice, including the preliminary drills, since the various common practice triads are just as necessary basic vocabulary and as much needed as the intervals.


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## clavichorder

Wow, it is not hard for me to sing a descending tritone these days or a minor sixth. And in most work in vocal groups, there is often a strong tonal grounding that makes it so one doesn't even have to think about pure intervals for most notes. Once you know a descending minor sixth or tritone in the context of a piece, it'll happen without fail.


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## Praeludium

Well I don't know if your advices are useful to clavichorder, but they certainly are to me.


When I asked my harmony teacher about ear training he said to me "it'll just come". I suspect he's studying music and solfège since early childhood and never needed to worry about that (he's finishing studies at Paris Superior Conservatory), but I began late and I certainly need to work on things as simple as intervals.


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## PetrB

Operadowney said:


> In our aural skills program at university, the profs suggested that we use tunes to memorize intervals. That's the way out society learns now. I don't see anything wrong with it.


There is plenty 'wrong' with it, or at least very unnecessarily cluttered, encumbered insofar as 'how we learn.' 
I've explained why, and offered another approach: it is post #9 in the thread.


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## clavichorder

I didn't mean to sound ungrateful, this thread was posted almost half a year ago and I dug it up because I had improved so much.


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## millionrainbows

I always think of minor sixths as being 5-min3, like in "Love Story".
Major sixths, I think of 5-M3, or the "NBC" chimes.

You haven't internalized these intervals yet, and this _must_ be done in a musical context, like a song.

For the tritone, try hearing it as M3/b7, or b7/M3. Go to a piano and play the appropriate b7th chord.


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## rborganist

As someone who has struggled with certain intervals, and whose undergraduate degree was a Bachelor of Music with a double major in organ and voice, I disagree with post number nine. His method may be theoretically correct, but it may not work for everyone, and it sounds very labor intensive to me. The bottom line is that everyone learns differently, and rote memorization, which is what his method amounts to, is seldom well retained. Notice I said seldom; some people will use the material often enough to keep it fresh in their memory. However, for those of use who must make a living doing something else and only get to do music on the side, we remember in the way that works for us.


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