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6.5
The Four Types of Chord
Progressions
6.5.1
Harmonic vs Melodic Intervals: Chord Change vs Pitch Change
The term interval has a considerably different meaning in harmony, compared with melody. Recall from Chapter Four that, in one sense, the term "harmonic interval" means two pitches sounded together. But it's the other sense of "harmonic interval," meaning "chord change"—two chords sounded one after the other—that applies here, and for the remainder of the book.
Melodic interval means "pitch change"—the pitch change you hear when two single notes (not chords) are sounded one after the other. A succession of melodic intervals is represented like this, where each number represents a note of the scale (pitch), called a scale degree (as discussed previously in Chapter 4):
1 – 4 – 2 – 5 – 1
Each dash represents a pitch change from one scale degree to another scale degree.