The reading courseLesson 11 of 13 · Level 6
6ths to 10ths, and seventh chords
Read wide leaps by their shape, seventh chords, and the dotted eighth.
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A 6th, an octave and a 10th from the same note, a seventh chord, and a dotted eighth with its sixteenth.
The rule for every interval: an odd number (3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th) goes from a line to a line or a space to a space; an even one (2nd, 4th, 6th, octave, 10th) from a line to a space. So a 6th is line to space with four notes between; a 7th line to line, one short of an octave; an octave the same letter, eight keys apart, on a line and a space.
Past the octave, a 9th is an octave and a step and a 10th an octave and a 3rd: the left hand's favourite stretch under a tune. Read the shape across the staff, or as an octave plus the small interval you know.
A seventh chord is a triad with one more 3rd on top: four notes, all lines or all spaces, G B D F. And a dotted eighth is three quarters of a beat, nearly always followed by a sixteenth: a long-short skip, counted 1 (e and) a.
The guides that go further: How to read intervals by their shape, How to read rhythm: note values, rests, dots and ties, and How to read chords: triads, inversions and sevenths.
Pieces this lesson opens
Pieces in the library that read as ready once you know everything up to this lesson, and didn't before it.
- Prelude in F sharp minor, Op. 28 No. 8Frédéric Chopinlevel 6
- Dance of the Sugar Plum FairyPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovskylevel 5
- Notturno, Op. 54 No. 4Edvard Grieglevel 5