This is Part II of an article which explains how ear-training improves your sight reading by default. If you haven’t read Part I, read that first.
Just Enough Music Theory to Help
To be able to look at a piece of music and hear the sound of it in our minds, we need to know a bit of music theory. By internalizing this information, you’ll find yourself a more intelligent, fluent and well-versed musician. And with a bit of practice, you’ll soon find yourself a musical sponge who’s sight reading like a ‘natural.’
Chromatic Half Steps And An Interval’s Sound
To begin, you must understand that the sound of an interval is created by the number of half-steps between the two tones played. Using the perfect fourth as our example, you’ll find that the distance between ‘here’ and ‘comes’ – from ‘Here Comes the Bride’ – is five half steps on the piano. So, if you start on any note and then play another five half steps up, and it will sound like the beginning to ‘Here Comes the Bride.’
Music Theory & Musical Notation
Again, each interval has its own unique and predictable sound. And while knowing these sounds and being able to call them by name can be a pretty cool party trick (for nerds), the real magic kicks in when you learn to properly ‘spell’ each interval. These musical spellings allow us to neatly organize music in its written form.
Enharmonic Note Spellings
Musically speaking, the term ‘spelling’ refers to the letter associated with each musical note. And each key on the piano has multiple spellings. For example, the green arrow is pointing to the black key that may be called C# (C-sharp) or Db (D-flat). These differing spellings – for the same key – are called enharmonic spellings, or simply enharmonics. Believe it or not, having multiple names for the same note makes writing – and therefore reading – music a lot less confusing.
C# and Db are ‘enharmonics’ – or – C# and Db are ‘enharmonic spellings’ of the same key.
Scale Degrees & Interval Spellings
Now, let’s take another look at the keyboard and notice that each of the enharmonic spellings uses one of the letters ‘A’ through ‘G’ from the English alphabet. These letters represent what are known as degrees – or sometimes – scale degrees.
A-B-C-D-E-F-G = degrees
These scale degrees map out what kind of interval we have between any two notes. For example, the interval from ‘A’ up the keyboard to ‘G’ is called a seventh. That’s because there are seven unique letters from A up to G (A-B-C-D-E-F-G = seven degrees).
Likewise, ‘A’ up to ‘C’ is considered a third, as it spans three degrees (A-B-C = three degrees).
A-B-C-D-E-F-G = ‘seventh,’ A-B-C = ‘third,’ ‘A-B-C-D = fourth,’ etc.
When Counting Degrees Accidentals Are Irrelevant
There is one more thing to know when it comes to properly spelling the intervals: when labeling the type of interval between two notes (third, fourth, fifth, etc) the only thing that matters is the letter assigned to each note. In other words, accidentals are completely irrelevant, and – using the third from ‘A’ to ‘C’ as an example – any kind of an ‘A’ (A-sharp, A-flat, or A-natural) going up to any kind of a ‘C’ (C-sharp, C-flat, or C-natural) is some kind of third.
Mastering the Interval Sounds & Spellings = Amazing Sight Reading (And More!)
So, how does all this music theory business help us sight read more proficiently? Well, if you are familiar with the sound of the perfect fourth, and know that C played up to F is that very interval, and know where those notes are on the staff, you know how this sounds:
C to F is a perfect fourth.
In fact, if you know all of the perfect fourth spellings from any of the chromatic notes, you know how the opening interval from our previously notated melody sounds too:
E to A is a perfect fourth.
These examples are simply meant to illustrate that by knowing:
- The sound of an interval,
- How to properly spell that interval from any given starting note,
- And where those notes are written on the musical staff…
…you can look at a piece of music and know how it sounds – easily! No questions asked. And the more you do it, the faster you’ll get. Soon, you’re reading musical notation like it’s the newspaper.
But, What About the First Note?
What we are dealing with is called relative pitch. Relative pitch is the mind’s awareness of the sounds produced when two or more notes are played at the same time, or side by side. In other words, it is knowing the possible relationships between musical tones. However, this does not exactly solve our initial problem of knowing whether we’re playing a C or a G.
Still not sure?
Or does it? Let’s check out how learning the basics of relative pitch may, in fact, help solve this problem once and for all in Part III->