What are Intervals?

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While many people wonder what these are, i can tell you that these are probably the most important thing in music theory, so learning them will open an infinite number or gates to your music composition and also an understanding of most of the songwriting techniques that we'll be learning.

The definition of an interval is very simple, an interval is the distance between 2 notes, they are measured from the lower note to the higher one. If the 2 notes are played successively (separately), the intervals are called "Melodic". If the 2 notes are played simultaneously, the interval is called "Harmonic".

Intervals can take different shapes including: major, minor, perfect, augmented, diminished.

As i said before, the major scale is the standard of the music theory, so let's go from there and name the intervals of the major scale depending on their sizes:

Unisons, Seconds, Thirds, Fourths, Fifths, Sixths, and Sevenths.

The unison, fourth, fifth and octaves are called "Perfect intervals".
The remaining intervals of the major scale: second, third, sixth, seventh are called major.

- If we lower a major interval by one half step "1 semitone= 1 fret on the guitar's fretboard", we get a minor interval. if we raise a minor interval by one half step we get a major interval.

- If we lower a major interval by 2 half steps (1 whole step= 2 semitones), we get a diminished interval. if we raise a diminished interval by 2 half step we get a major interval.

- If we raise a major interval by 1 half step, we get an augmented interval and the opposite is also true.

In the case of perfect intervals:

- If we raise a perfect interval by 1 half step in becomes augmented.
- If we lower a perfect interval by 1 half step in becomes diminished.

The last case is the case of a minor interval, if it's raised by 2 half steps (guess what it will become), yeah you're absolutely right "augmented".

These are what you're going to be using as major songwriting techniques and also as songwriting ideas to use more chords and add flavors to your songs.