Practice This! is an educational project of Earshot Jazz with sponsorship from The Seattle Drum School. Each month in Earshot Jazz a new lesson by a different local jazz artist will appear for students to learn from and for non-musician readers to gain insight into the craft of improvising.

Practice This!
June 2007
Dawn Clement on Intervals

Click here to listen to Dawn's Practice This! audio clip.

In music, an interval is the distance between two notes. All music is composed of intervals. Each interval has its own, familiar sound. For instance, what we call a perfect fourth (an example of a perfect fourth is C to F) is the first two notes of “Here Comes the Bride,” a song that most people know. Think of the part of the tune that is “Here comes” – that is the sound of a perfect fourth. Another example of a common interval is a major sixth (C to A), which is the first interval in the song “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.”

Each interval has its own, specific sound and its own name; some of them have multiple names. Here are all of the intervals and examples of each interval. Each example will use C as the first note, but an interval is the space between any two notes, so they don’t have to start on the note C.

Minor Second – C to C#
Major Second – C to D
Minor Third – C to Eb
Major Third – C to E
Perfect Fourth – C to F
Augmented Fourth – C to F# (also called a Diminished Fifth or a Tri-tone)
Perfect Fifth – C to G
Minor Sixth – C to G#
Major Sixth – C to A
Minor Seventh – C to Bb
Major Seventh – C to B
Octave – C to C

When improvising, I like to use the intervals in the melody of a tune to play off of. If the last two notes of a tune’s melody are an interesting interval, rather than just using the last two notes as a starting place to improvise, I can think of the interval between those two notes as a starting point. Then I can play that interval over the chord changes to the tune.

So, if I start with a sixth at the beginning of a solo, I can keep playing sixths and move them around to fit the chords, rather than just playing any notes in the chord and hoping to form them into a melodic solo.

If I use the same interval a few times in a row, it can hook the listener better because even if the notes are different, the space between them stays the same, giving the improvisation a more organized sound and feel.

Some tunes are composed of only one type of interval. Thelonious Monk’s composition “Mysterioso” is all major sixths moving up and down. The idea or concept of moving one type interval can be used when improvising as well as composing. Intervals can also be used to shape the sound of a chord.

Pianist Dawn Clement is one of the busiest performers and educators in the Pacific Northwest. In 2003, she released her first album, Hush, on Conduit Records. Other highlights include a performance at the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.) as one of five finalists in the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano Competition, in 2006; an invitation to compete at the 3rd International Martial Solal Jazz Piano Competition in Paris, in 2002; Earshot Jazz Golden Ear awards for Best Emerging Artist of 2000, Best Jazz Quartet and Best Album of 2003 for her performance with the legendary trombonist Julian Priester (In Deep End Dance), and a nomination for Earshot Jazz Record of the Year in 2004 for Hush. She has performed with such notable artists as Pharaoh Sanders, Edmonia Jarrett, Nancy King, Ingrid Jensen, Louis Moutin, Hadley Caliman, Buddy Catlett, John Clayton, Ron Steen, Chuck Deardorf, Reade Whitwell, Mercer Ellington, Jane Ira Bloom, and Bobby Previte.