Augmented,

diminished and
perfect intervals
What are augmented,
diminished and perfect
intervals?
If you have read the article about degrees, you
saw that we mentioned only 7 notes in western
music (C, D, E, F, G, A, B). But if we wanted to
use a reference for other notes too? (C#, D#, F#,
G#, A#)? For this there is a more embracing
definition, as we will see now:

The first note is represented for the first degree,

as we already saw. Let’s use like example the first
degree of the C note.

In this case, the D note is the major 2nd. The note

C# (or Db), in this case, is the minor 2nd. This
nomenclature (“major” and “minor”) exists to
indicate if the interval (distance between two
notes) is short or long. Major intervals are long
and minors are short. You can see that in the
previous example, the “major second”
represented the interval of one tone (because D
is a tone above C), and the “minor second”
represented the interval of half tone (Db is half
tone above C). Therefore, these names were
given just for distance identification between
notes. Expanding the concept to all notes, starting
with C, we have this:

C —> first degree major (perfect unison)

C# —> minor 2nd
D —> major 2nd
D#—> minor 3rd
E —> major 3rd
F —> perfect 4th
F#—> augmented 4th or diminished 5th
G —> perfect fifth
G#—> augmented fifth or minor sixth
A —> major sixth
A#—> minor seventh
B —> major seventh

Probably you have already asked yourself why do

these names “augmented”, “perfect” and
“diminished” exist. Well, you have to know that it
is just a definition, and this is the “language” that
you will find in any book about music or song
books. The logic is the same as we saw for the
names “major” and “minor”. The name
“augmented” indicates an interval longer and
“diminished” indicates an interval shorter.
“Perfect” is in the middle of these two.

But we can not simply use the names “major” and

“minor” to all the notes instead of using
“diminished”, “augmented” or “perfect”? Yes, we
could. So, why do other names exist? In the
advanced topics you will understand why this
becomes really useful. For now, just memorize
these nomenclatures and what they represent. As
you saw, there is no mystery, it is just given
names to specific degrees.

Let’s now exercise this nomenclature starting

from other notes besides C:

From the seventh degree, notes start to repeat

themselves, because the 8th degree is the same
as the 1st.

Following this logic:

– 9th degree is the same as the 2nd degree.
– 11th degree is the same as the 4th degree.
– 13th degree is the same as the 6th degree.

You can be asking yourself: if there is no need to

talk about degrees after the seventh, because
they repeat themselves, why don’t they use the
notation 9th, 11th and 13th?? Well, some
musicians prefer to use these degrees to make
clear which octave must be used. For example: If
it is written the chord symbol Cm6, probably you
will create the chord of Cm and take the closest
6th degree to create Cm6. Now, writing Cm13,
you would know that you have to use the 6th
degree one octave above and not the closest 6th
degree. The only difference is between this two
chords is the sonority lightly distinct due to the
octave used to 6th degree (in the next topics we
will talk about everything you need to know about
chords and symbols. Don’t worry if you didn’t
understand this example).

And about the 9th extension, it is almost always

one octave above, for this is used in the place of
the 2nd. But this depends on the personal taste of
each musician.

It is important for you to know details like these to

not be in doubt about these nomenclatures.

Very good, let’s talk now about the practical use

of all these notations that we saw!

Applying the concept

of augmented,
diminished and perfect
intervals
We can refer ourselves to any note if we want to
take as base some reference note. In the same
way as we did with the article about degrees. We
will take here the same principle of the previous
article because we are complementing the
subject; however, before we worked in C scale,
saying just 3rd degree, 6th degree, etc, we
weren’t specifying if the degree was major, minor,
perfect, diminished or augmented. For this, it was
important to say that degrees would be like the
major scale format. Now it will be not necessary
to link to a scale, because we will specify each
degree separately. You have bellow some
examples (exercises):

– Minor third degree of C: D#

– minor seventh degree of G: F
– minor second degree of D: D#
– augmented fifth of C: G#
– perfect fourth (or fourth degree) of A: D
– diminished fifth of B: F

You can check these answers with the table we

showed before.

Observation: for example, we are only talking

about notes, not chords! The names
“augmented” and “diminished”, as well as the
names “major” and “minor” also appear in chords,
bur this is another approach! Try to not mix the
things, we are here talking about notes and their
isolated nomenclature. When the subject is
chords, nomenclature has another purpose, For
this is important this distinction. Keep this in mind.

Go to: Octave

Back to: Module 2

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