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interval
Sign in to saveAlso known as musical interval, pitch interval, music interval
physical quantity; ratio between two sonic frequencies, often measured in cents, a unit derived from the logarithm of the frequency ratio
An interval is the distance between two musical notes, measured by comparing their frequencies (how fast the sound waves vibrate). It matters because it determines how notes sound together—whether they create harmony, dissonance, or other musical effects.
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In music theory, an interval is a difference in pitch between two sounds. An interval may be described as horizontal, linear, or melodic if it refers to successively sounding tones, such as two adjacent pitches in a melody, and vertical or harmonic if it pertains to simultaneously sounding tones, such as in a chord.
In Western music, intervals are most commonly differencing between notes of a diatonic scale. Intervals between successive notes of a scale are also known as scale steps. The smallest of these intervals is a semitone. Intervals smaller than a semitone are called microtones. They can be formed using the notes of various kinds of non-diatonic scales. Some of the very smallest ones are called commas, and describe small discrepancies, observed in some tuning systems, between enharmonically equivalent notes such as C♯ and D♭. Intervals can be arbitrarily small, and even imperceptible to the human ear.