Interval Identification — Hear It, Then Name It

The bottleneck is never remembering names; it is playing the sound in your head

This page teaches you nothing new; it gives you a procedure you can practise on your own. If you can already sing note names but still cannot identify intervals by ear, the problem is not knowledge.

Where the bottleneck is: three layers

Aural ability has three layers, and most people stall between the second and the third:

1. Hearing that there is a difference — same or not, higher or lower; 2. Hearing what it is — a major third or a perfect fifth; 3. Hearing it internally — reconstructing it in your head with no sound present.

Layer 3 is the bottleneck. Naming can work by elimination ("smaller than a major third"), but singing must be exact down to the two pitches.

So every exercise below targets layer 3.

Three pairs, training your sense of distance

Ignore names at first; just hear the distance.

One: major third

Two: minor third

Three: perfect fifth

A procedure you can actually execute

1. Use only the "together" button — playing the notes separately turns the answer into an impression of two notes rather than an impression of a distance; 2. Sing it in your head (layer 3); 3. If you can sing it, play them separately to verify; 4. The pair you cannot sing is the pair you should practise — not all of them.

Step 4 is the crux. Most people's practice fails because they work through everything; the right move is to work only on what you cannot yet sing.

A misreading worth clearing up

"I cannot hear the difference between a major and minor third" is not a problem with your ears. The real causes are:

• no reference — nobody ever told you what a major third should sound like;
• listening without doing — however much you hear, it will not stick until you rebuild it internally.

Both are fixed by the procedure above. You do not need different ears.

Where progress stalls

Ear-training progress is not linear. The usual trajectory: fast early progress → plateau → breakthrough.

The plateau sits exactly at "I can hear it but cannot sing it" — between layer 2 and layer 3.

That is not a talent problem; it is a change of training target. Past it, progress speeds up again.

Next

• Starting from zero: what an interval is
• The pair that differs by half a semitone: major and minor thirds
• A more systematic method: how ear training is taught
• Definitions: the glossary entry on intervals.

Sources

• 本页为听辨练习的流程说明；具体训练法依据通用听觉训练原则
• 实例均标注来源与许可档位，可在线试听

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.