Musical Intervals

A musical interval is the difference in pitch between two sounds. Listen carefully to the following audio clip:

You have just heard 5 sounds. After the first sound, the second one is higher in pitch, the third lower, the fourth even lower and finally the fifth is slightly higher. So, some sounds are higher, some lower and when sounds follow one another as you heard earlier, these pitch differences create musical intervals.

Musical intervals are not produced randomly, there are well defined mathematical ratios between sounds’ pitches (at a physical level we are speaking of sound frequencies, see also the article Musical Sounds)

Musical Sounds

To understand what musical sounds are, we must first understand what sound is. Sound can be defined from two perspectives: one regards our perception through the auditory organ (the ear), and the other regards sound as a physical phenomenon. From a perceptual standpoint, sound is everything we can hear: the singing of birds, the noise of cars, the nervous beats in the radiator from the neighbor downstairs, or the voice of our mother calling us to the table to eat that wonderful broccoli, which has absolutely no taste. Read more

Music and Motherese (language of the mothers)

Music and motherese (language of the mothers)

Many people think that a child learns to be musical when attending for the first time kindergarten, school or maybe when taking his first piano lesson. Actually, our baby learns to be musical since the moment is born.

How does the baby learn to be musical? Interacting with his mother. Scientific studies have shown that we, mothers, when talking to our babies, we are not using the same language in the same way we speak with adults or older children. But no studies were needed about that, every mother already knows this.

Tag Archive for: education

Musical Intervals

Musical Sounds

Music and motherese (language of the mothers)