Histogram of Intervals


dlwalke
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Joined: 02/02/19
Posts: 240
dlwalke
Full Access
Joined: 02/02/19
Posts: 240
11/20/2020 3:59 am

I've started to do some ear training to recognize different intervals. To help prioritize, and just out of curiosity, I wanted to see which intervals were most common (and which were least common). So here are the results I got from looking at 30 songs on my "want to learn" list (mostly rock or rock-adjacent music from the late 60s through the 80s, but some other stuff too), and just counting up how many instances of different intervals I encountered. I looked at 5 successive intervals per song from the vocals, and another 5 from an instrumental solo, ending up with 150 intervals (30 songs X 5 intervals) for each. The distribution of intervals was pretty similar for both, so in the histogram below I added them together. Ascending intervals are shown as rising from the horizontal axis; descending intervals are shown as decreases from the horizontal axis.

I also thought that there might be a different distribution for the first 2 notes and the last 2 notes of songs so I looked at the interval between the first and second, and the penultimate and final note for each song as well (the latter was a bit more challenging than I expected because most songs I have recordings of fade out rather than end so in some instances I had to just make a decision about what sounded it like it could be the final note. I can't figure out how to embed more than 1 pictures so I will put those data in a 2nd post.

Also, I should note that I tend to like songs with melodic solo's more than fast, generally less melodic, sometimes shreddy type solo's, so that may have biased the results.

For both solo's and lead lines, the most common intervals between non-unison notes were major 2nd and minor 3rd, followed by flatted second, then perfect 4th, and then major 3rd and perfect 5th intervals. The remaining intervals (tritones and anything greater than a perfect 5th) were very infrequent. So this makes me feel that for starters, I should focus on recognizing everything up to a perfect 4th, and also a perfect 5th. It also makes me think I should include both ascending and descending interval examples of those intervals.


# 1
Guitar Tricks Admin
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Joined: 09/28/05
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Guitar Tricks Admin
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Joined: 09/28/05
Posts: 3,476
11/20/2020 5:11 pm

Hey dlwalke,

Thank you for sharing your results. This is incredible! This kind of project would have taken you some serious time and devotion. We really appreciate your hard work. So with this information, we can suss out what the most common intervals used in rock. Are you adjusting you ear training exercises based on this information? Practicing M2nds more than before? It's clear that you weren't listening to any jazz, becasue the frequency falls off pretty hard after m3rds lol!

Nice work!


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# 2
dlwalke
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Joined: 02/02/19
Posts: 240
dlwalke
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Joined: 02/02/19
Posts: 240
11/20/2020 10:01 pm
Originally Posted by: Guitar Tricks Admin

Hey dlwalke,

Thank you for sharing your results. This is incredible! This kind of project would have taken you some serious time and devotion. We really appreciate your hard work. So with this information, we can suss out what the most common intervals used in rock. Are you adjusting you ear training exercises based on this information? Practicing M2nds more than before? It's clear that you weren't listening to any jazz, becasue the frequency falls off pretty hard after m3rds lol!

Nice work!

Haha. Yes, you are correct that jazz was not well represented in the playlist I collected these data from. I think I did have La Mer (Beyond the Sea) and maybe one or two others that are, I don't know, light jazz...kind-of. But more like rock-adjacent type stuff - everything from theme to the Banana Splits TV show to "Shake Your Money Maker" to "Don't Fear the Reaper" and "Planet Claire." I spent about a week on this, mostly less than an hour a day. It would have helped if I had an app or method that allowed me to select or record a certain part of a song and then play it back slowly while preserving the sound. Maybe I could have recorded a section and then uploaded it to YouTube and then playing it back at quarter speed or something as you can do that without messing up the frequencies, but that seems a bit involved.

I started to do some ear training a while back but it gave way to other guitar related activities. I want to get back to it though and based on these results hope to start off with ascending and descending m2, M2, m3 intervals uding the "Earpeggio" app which lets you select which intervals you want to get quizzed on (it also has customizable sections for chord identification and scale identification also).


# 3
Dave Celentano
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Joined: 07/29/14
Posts: 358
Dave Celentano
Guitar Tricks Instructor
Joined: 07/29/14
Posts: 358
07/26/2021 5:10 pm

Very cool and analytical. It might be helpful to the other readers if you mention the songs you used for each interval discovery (the song, which section - the Intro, Verse, Solo, etc).

Originally Posted by: dlwalke

I've started to do some ear training to recognize different intervals. To help prioritize, and just out of curiosity, I wanted to see which intervals were most common (and which were least common). So here are the results I got from looking at 30 songs on my "want to learn" list (mostly rock or rock-adjacent music from the late 60s through the 80s, but some other stuff too), and just counting up how many instances of different intervals I encountered. I looked at 5 successive intervals per song from the vocals, and another 5 from an instrumental solo, ending up with 150 intervals (30 songs X 5 intervals) for each. The distribution of intervals was pretty similar for both, so in the histogram below I added them together. Ascending intervals are shown as rising from the horizontal axis; descending intervals are shown as decreases from the horizontal axis.

I also thought that there might be a different distribution for the first 2 notes and the last 2 notes of songs so I looked at the interval between the first and second, and the penultimate and final note for each song as well (the latter was a bit more challenging than I expected because most songs I have recordings of fade out rather than end so in some instances I had to just make a decision about what sounded it like it could be the final note. I can't figure out how to embed more than 1 pictures so I will put those data in a 2nd post.

Also, I should note that I tend to like songs with melodic solo's more than fast, generally less melodic, sometimes shreddy type solo's, so that may have biased the results.

For both solo's and lead lines, the most common intervals between non-unison notes were major 2nd and minor 3rd, followed by flatted second, then perfect 4th, and then major 3rd and perfect 5th intervals. The remaining intervals (tritones and anything greater than a perfect 5th) were very infrequent. So this makes me feel that for starters, I should focus on recognizing everything up to a perfect 4th, and also a perfect 5th. It also makes me think I should include both ascending and descending interval examples of those intervals.


# 4

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