Note that the interval between two adjacent sounds in this table is one semitone horizontally and one octave vertically.
with frequencies:
What you can do on this page
This is a reference page rather than a lesson: the interval table, the chord and scale
families, and a playable map of every key with its frequency. Click any key in the map to
hear it — the notes are laid out exactly as they sit on the keyboard, one semitone apart
horizontally and one octave apart vertically.
Use it as a lookup while you learn. If a song page mentions a major third, the interval
table tells you it is four semitones. If you are working on the C major scale, the scale
list shows you which family it belongs to and where to go next.
How chords, scales and intervals fit together
A scale is a set of notes, a chord is a few notes from that set played together, and an
interval is the distance between any two of them. That is the whole hierarchy: learn the
twelve intervals and you can build any scale; learn a scale and you can build every chord
that belongs to it.
In C major the practical version is short. The scale is C D E F G A B, the three most
useful chords are C, F and G, and the shape that builds each of them is a major third
stacked on top of a minor third. Everything else on this page is a variation on that idea.
Using the keyboard map below
The two grids at the bottom of the page show the same keyboard twice: once with note names,
once with frequencies in hertz. Each row is one octave, and the rows step down from octave
6 to octave 1.
Middle C is the C in the octave 4 row, and it is the reference point every other note is
measured from. Press it, then press the same C one row up, and you hear an octave: twelve
semitones, the same note name, twice the frequency.