What Are Intervals? (Beginner Level)
Understanding the "distance" between notes makes it easier to recreate and expand musical ideas
1) Why knowing distances helps
When you learn a melody or riff by ear, you're already sensing the distance between notes — "a little higher," "a lot lower."
Intervals turn that feeling into numbers you can understand and reproduce.
If music theory were a recipe, intervals would be your tablespoons and teaspoons — a common unit everyone understands.
That shared language lets you recreate the same flavor of sound.
In other words, intervals are the measuring tools that make music a shared language.
* Ear training: You can write down what you hear as steps or jumps.
* Composition: Design melodic motion to create specific moods.
* Analysis: Describe progressions and melodies in measurable terms.
Understanding intervals builds the foundation for learning chords and scales later.
For example, a C major chord is made of C–E–G, and an E major chord is E–G#–B. Remembering every note of every chord is hard, but in intervals, it's simple:
A major chord = Root + 3rd + 5th.
Plug in any root (C, F#, etc.), and just move up a 3rd and a 5th — that's your chord.
2) C–D–E–F–G–A–B–C and the concept of the root
Let's use the C major scale to see how intervals relate to notes:
| Note | C | D | E | F | G | A | B | C |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interval | 1st (Root) | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th (Octave) |
The key rule: Count the root note as "1."
So if C is the root, D is 2nd, E is 3rd, and so on.
🎶 Where the half steps are
In C major, there are only two places where the interval is a half step:
| Between | Distance | Interval relationship |
|---|---|---|
| 3rd (E) and 4th (F) | Half step | 3 → 4 |
| 7th (B) and next root (C) | Half step | 7 → 1 (next octave) |
All other steps are whole steps (1 tone).
Knowing this pattern lets you understand any key by the distance from its root.
🎸 What happens when you change the root
If you move the root from C to D, all notes shift up by one whole step — everything sounds higher, but the relationships stay the same.
That's why "C–D–E–F–G–A–B–C" and "D–E–F#–G–A–B–C#–D" sound similar — the intervals between notes are identical.
3) Half steps and whole steps on the guitar
On the guitar, moving up one fret = a half step. Move up two frets = one whole step (1 tone) — that's a change of one interval degree.
Because of this, once you know your root note on the fretboard, you can easily see where the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and other intervals lie.
That's why the guitar is an instrument where intervals are visible — theory literally appears under your fingers.
4) Summary: Intervals are music's shared unit
* Intervals = distance between notes. They're the foundation for ear training, composition, and improvisation.
* Thinking in intervals (instead of note names) helps you recognize the same patterns in any key.
On the guitar, once you know your root, you can see* where every interval sits.* Mastering intervals will make the rest of music theory much easier to understand.
> In the next article, we'll use these intervals to build chords (harmony). > In the OtoTheory app, you can explore intervals on the fretboard and in the chord dictionary — give it a try!