Musical Interval Ear Training

Hearing Musical Intervals in Real Music

You’ve learned to recognise musical intervals using familiar tunes, patterns, and the major and minor scales. The next step is to hear those intervals within real music.

In this aural training resource, we’ll listen to short extracts from well-known classical pieces and identify intervals as they occur naturally in the music.

You don’t need to know the whole piece. Listen carefully to the opening bars, or to the specific passage indicated, and identify the interval you hear.

If you haven’t already worked through the basic interval patterns, start with How to Remember Musical Intervals: Easy Patterns, Songs & Ear Training.

How to use this page

For each example:

1. Listen first without looking at the score.

1. Identify the interval. Is it ascending or descending? Is it a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and so on? Is it major, minor, perfect, augmented or diminished?

1. Look at the score and identify the two notes.

1. Listen again, trying to hear the interval as part of the music rather than as an isolated exercise.

The aim is to move from recognising intervals in simple exercises to hearing them naturally within real music.

A useful reminder about intervals

Alongside learning to recognise intervals through familiar tunes, you can work out some intervals by treating the bottom note as if it were the key note of a major or minor scale.

For example, C to E♭ is a minor 3rd because E♭ belongs to the scale of C minor, whereas C to E is a major 3rd because E belongs to the scale of C major.

Perfect intervals (4ths, 5ths and octaves) are the same in both major and minor keys. However, this method needs a little more care with 2nds and 7ths, as the notes of the major and minor scales do not provide a straightforward comparison for every interval.

For a more detailed explanation and plenty of practice describing diatonic intervals, see the All-In-One Music Theory books.

A useful reminder about inversions

Once you’ve identified the interval, try playing its inversion.

Remember that interval numbers add up to 9 when an interval is inverted. Major intervals become minor, minor intervals become major, perfect intervals remain perfect, and augmented intervals become diminished (and vice versa).

Major 3rd ↔ Minor 6th
Minor 3rd ↔ Major 6th
Perfect 4th ↔ Perfect 5th
Augmented 4th ↔ Diminished 5th (tritone)
Octave ↔ Unison

When you invert an interval, its number and type change according to these rules.

🎓 Trinity Grade 5: These exercises follow the interval inversion format used in Trinity’s Grade 5 theory material, in which the lower note is moved up by an octave. The direction of the interval may remain the same.

If you’re working towards Grade 5, the Trinity College London Supplement includes written exercises for practising inverted intervals.

Brahms – Symphony No. 4, Op. 98

🔊 LISTEN TO BRAHMS

🎹 Brahms Symphony No. 4 – Simplified/Piano Version

Listening task

What intervals do you hear at the opening between each pair of notes?

Between the 1st and 2nd notes
Between the 3rd and 4th notes
Between the 5th and 6th notes
Between the 7th and 8th notes

Listen for the clearly separated groups of notes in the strings, with a rest between each group.

❓ Can you identify each interval by number and type, and say whether it is ascending or descending?

❓ Can you play the inversion of each interval?

Beethoven – Symphony No. 5, Op. 67

🔊 LISTEN TO BEETHOVEN

What intervals do you hear at the opening between each pair of notes?

Between the 1st and 2nd notes
Between the 3rd and 4th notes

Listen for the clearly separated groups of notes in the strings, with a rest between each group.

🎹 Beethoven Symphony No. 5 – Simplified/Piano Version

❓Can you identify each interval by number and type, and say whether it is ascending or descending?

❓ Can you play its inversion?

Mozart – Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525

🔊 LISTEN TO MOZART

🎹 Mozart – Eine kleine Nachtmusik – Simplified/Piano Version

❓ What interval do you hear at the opening? (number and type, ascending or descending)

❓ Can you play its inversion?

Beethoven – Symphony No. 9, Op. 125

🔊 LISTEN TO BEETHOVEN

🎼 Beethoven Symphony No. 9 – Full Score
In the score, look at the interval between the first two notes in the violin part. In the audio recording we have provided, the corresponding musical figure is played by a wind instrument.

❓ What interval do you hear when the wind instrument clearly enters with the melody, following the short introduction?

❓ Can you play its inversion?