Archive II: Learning the Basic Elements

Up until now we've dealt exclusively with major and minor intervals. There are also a handful of diminished and augmented intervals that show up frequently in music. I like to focus exclusively on four - the augmented fourth and diminished fifth (these are two different spellings of "the tritone"), the augmented second and its inversion, the diminished seventh.

You might want to review my intervals printout to make sure you understand how these four intervals are defined.

The second half of this worksheet will give you written practice.

You could ask Robert Whelan's intervals quizzer (treble clef bass clef) to give you only augmented and diminished seconds, fourths, fifths, and sevenths. However, that will also include bizarre intervals that rarely occur (like the diminished second or augmented seventh.)

My rudiments quizzer has a unit for these so-called "tricky" intervals.