The Complete Idiot''s Guide to Music Theory

Interval
Song-Specific Phrase
ASCENDING
Minor second
Theme from 
Jaws
Dum-dum … 
(bass line)
“As Time Goes By” 
YOU MUST 
remember this …
(from 
Casablanca
)
Major second
“Frere Jacques”
FRE-RE
Jacques …
“Happy Birthday”
Hap-
PY BIRTH
-day to you …
Minor third
“To Dream the 
TO DREAM
the impossible dream …
Impossible Dream”
Brahm’s Lullaby
LULLA-BY
and goodnight …
Interestingly, about 5 percent of musicians (just musicians—not the general popu-
lation) have something called 
absolute pitch
or
perfect pitch,
which means they
can wake up in the morning and, with no prompting or assistance, correctly sing
or identify any given pitch in the scale. Some people claim to be able to help
you develop this skill, but in general it is virtually impossible for anyone over the
age of five or so to learn perfect pitch. (Not 100 percent impossible, but almost.)
In any case, you don’t really need this kind of long-term pitch memory to tran-
scribe music. You can get along fine with the short-term pitch memory that we all
possess, along with a good interval memory, which we’ll discuss next.
Note
continues

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Part 4:
Accompanying
160
Intervals Found in Popular Melodies
(continued)
Interval
Song-Specific Phrase
Major third
“Have Yourself a Merry 
HAVE YOUR-
self a merry little 
Little Christmas”
Christmas …
“Oh When the Saints 
OH WHEN 
the saints …
Come Marching In”
Perfect fourth
“Here Comes the Bride”