Greybeard's Interval Chart

Back to Home

The following tables allow you to work out the various intervals in any key and differentiates between perfect, major, minor, augmented and diminished intervals.
The term diminished is used in conjunction with a flat note and augmented with a sharp. So the blue note is either seen as F# and is augmented or Gb and is diminished - although enharmonic, they represent 2 different intervals.

Enharmonic names are synonyms for the same note (e.g. F# & Gb or augmented 4th & diminished 5th).

Intervals can be worked out as following:

Take the lower pitched note of the two in question - the root note -(let's say C) and count the number of letters involved up to the higher pitched note (let's say G), so C, D, E, F, G gives five letters - this is the interval - a 5th, in this case.

We now have to work out the quality of the interval and you get that by looking up the number of semi-tones from the root note, as shown in the table below

Semi-tones
from Root		 Example
Interval
 Note:
Dim
Minor
Perfect
Major
Aug
0
 C - C
C - Dbb
X
2nd
x
Unison X
x
x
x
1

C - C#
C - Db
x

2nd
x
x
Unison
x
2
 C - D
C - Ebb
X
3rd
x
x
2nd
X
x
 xx
3
 C - D#
C - Eb
x

3rd
x
x
2nd

 x
4
 C - E
C - Fb
X
4th
x
x
3rd
X
x
 x
5
 C - E#
C - F
x
x
X
4th
x
3rd
X
 x
6
 C - F#
C - Gb
X
5th
x
x
x
4th
X
 Blue note
7
 C - G
C - Abb
X
6th
x
5th
X
x
x
 x
8
 C - G#
C - Ab
x

6th
x
x
5th

 x
9
 C - A
C - Bbb
7th
x
x
6th
x
 xx
10
 C - A#
C - Bb
x

7th
x
x
6th

 x
11
 C - B
C - Cb
X
Unison
x
x
7th
X
x
 xx
12
 C - C
x
x
Octave
x
7th
 x

A further example may be Cb to G#. The interval is a 5th - C, D, E, F, G. That will never change - C to G will always be a 5th. The quality is determined by the number of semi-tones between root and target note. Cb to C is 1, C to G is 7, G to G# is 1, so in total we have 9 semitones. However, an augmented 5th is only 8 semitones, so what do we do here? It actually becomes a double augmented 5th, i.e. two semitones higher than the perfect/major interval.

A double diminished interval is also possible, which would be 3 semi-tones lower than major and 2 semi-tones lower than perfect, e.g C# to Gbb.

© Graham Merry 2004