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How to play Interval Loader


Basic rules

When you run the program, you will see the game machine.  Click the ON switch to begin.

Switch

The machine will produce a box that makes a harmonic sound.

If you hear a dissonant, eerie sound, click the pumpkin label on the left side of the screen.  If you hear a pleasant sound, click the diamond label instead.  The label will attach itself to the box.

Once the box is labeled, the conveyor belt turns on automatically.  If the label matches the interval that was played, the box will be dropped into the loading pile on the right; otherwise, the box will be dropped into the trash pile on the left.  Each new pile moves to the right to make room for more boxes.

When you have loaded two full pallets, the game advances to the next level.    Each new level adds a new interval sound and activates its matching label.  Once you have reached a new level, you can start at that level in a future game.

When the trash pile is five boxes high, the game is over.

Scoring

Each label that you match adds the following point value to your score:


1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

When you load a full stack of five boxes, you get 5 bonus points multiplied by the current level.

When you load a full pallet of twenty-five boxes, you get 50 bonus points multiplied by the current level.

In each level, for the second pallet, all point values are doubled.

Keyboard shortcuts

In addition to the shortcuts listed in the menus, the following keystrokes are equivalent to clicking on each of these on-screen:


U

J

I

K

L or A

O or W

; or S

E

D

R

F

Spacebar

When Auto Play is off, pressing N is equivalent to clicking the switch.

Additional games

In the "Double Notes" and "Combination" games, the box will play two notes separately, and open its lid.

 

In the "Double Notes" games, the labels are replaced by cargo items that you can load into the box, although they each still match to the same sounds.  Click the cargo items in the same order they were played.

Once you have selected two items of cargo, the box is labeled to match the interval formed by the two notes you've selected.  (This label is just for your information, and does not affect your score.)

In the "Combination" games, the items and labels appear side by side.  When you hear the box play its two tones, select the items of cargo that match the notes you've heard, and then label the box with the interval formed between the two tones.  If you label the box to match only one of the tones, instead of matching the interval between the two tones, the box will end up on the trash pile, although you will receive points for selecting the matching cargo.


Menu options

Game menu

Restart Game abandons the game currently in play and resets the score.

Two Notes through Combinations Advanced are the names of the different games available in Interval Loader.  Click the name of a game to launch that game.  Each game becomes "unlocked" when you reach a specified high score on the previous game.

Two Notes - Two-note intervals with middle C as the tonic.
One Note - Chord progression in C-major, followed by one note.
Two Notes, advanced - Two-note intervals with random tonics.
One Note, advanced - Chord progression in random key, followed by one note.
Double Notes - Chord progression in C-major, followed by two notes.
Double Notes, advanced - Chord progression in random key, followed by two separate notes.
Intervals - Two notes played separately in ascending order.
Intervals, advanced - Two notes played separately in descending order.
Combinations - Chord progression in random key, followed by two notes ascending; match the notes and the interval.
Combinations, advanced - Chord progression in random key, followed by two notes descending; match the notes and the interval.

Benchmarks... opens the benchmarking game.

Quit to Chordsweeper transports you to the Chordsweeper game board.

Quit Interval Loader shuts down the game machine.

Options menu

Auto Play saves you from clicking the switch over and over again.  Click Auto Play on and it will automatically produce new boxes for you.  You can also activate Auto Play by clicking the switch when it is "on", or deactivate Auto Play by clicking the switch when it is at "Auto".

Choose Level... brings up the level selection screen.  Click the up and down arrows on the screen, or press the up and down arrows on your keyboard, to change the game level.

Customize... allows you to select which specific labels you want to play with.  Customize is only available after you have passed Level 5.  High scores are not saved in this mode.

Slower Chords and Faster Chords are applicable to One Note, Double Note, and Combination games.  These options alter the speed at which a new box appears.  The program is initially set to "Slower Chords", but will save your choice if you change it.

Slower Animation and Faster Animation are applicable at any time.  They change the overall speed of the game.

Rough Animation is useful for computers with older video cards.  Sometimes the computer is unable to refresh the screen quickly enough; "Rough Animation" cuts in half the number of times the computer has to refresh the screen.  Smooth Animation is the default and should be fine for most video cards.

Help menu

High Scores displays your high scores for the current game.

Show Messages will show or hide the help text that appears in the middle of the screen.

How to Play brings you to this page.


Benchmarking

In order to measure your progress, you can create benchmarks for each level.  It's a good idea to create a benchmark just before you begin a level and then again after you finish a level, although you can make more benchmarks at any time.  Read more about benchmarking.


Additional strategy

It helps to associate an interval's sound with a familiar melody fragment.  For example, when I hear a major third , although I can usually recognize it immediately, I can double-check by trying to sing "Fi-ga-ro..."  Keep in mind that you do not need to start from a tonic note and "move up" when you do this!  This works best if you can find a melody which begins on that scale degree.

You'll get a higher score if you start at Level 1.

Beginning with Level 12, Interval Loader starts to play intervals using non-piano sounds.


Learning goals

"Interval Loader" is designed to help you recognize scale degrees and intervals harmonically.  Harmonic listening has significant advantages over listening to intervals as distance.

Harmonic listening is a more flexible and more powerful method of listening.  You don't need a "reference tone" to identify a pitch; all you have to do is choose a key signature.  This is the same strategy which P.T. Brady used for his "Fixed-Scale Mechanism of Absolute Pitch"; by relating everything he heard to the key of C-major, which he had memorized, he was able to achieve high levels of pitch recognition.

Harmonic awareness is beneficial to learning perfect pitch.  In order to recognize which part of a musical tone is its pitch, you need to be able to recognize which parts of the sound are not the pitch.  A tone's scale degree is most often mistaken for its pitch.  Once you know the sound of a tone's scale degree, you won't confuse the scale degree with the pitch sound.

Harmonic perception of scale degrees makes it easier to produce harmonic sounds when you are singing or playing.  As one example, many singers find it difficult to avoid "locking in" to the melody.  A singer who perceives intervals only as distance often has to avoid listening to the melody in order to prevent being drawn away from their part; they need to "hold on" to the tone they're singing in order to have a reference for the next note.  But if a singer understands the harmonic sound of each scale degree, they can actively listen to the melody and produce any harmony they imagine.  They know how to create a harmonic feeling which blends together with the melody, rather than having to produce a tone that stands some "distance away".

For more details about harmonic listening, and a lot more information, please read this entry from Phase 7, or get yourself a copy of W.A. Mathieu's Harmonic Experience.

Using the keyboard shortcuts should make it easier to play piano, for two reasons:

The half-keyboard research has demonstrated that the mind does not retain the specific location of a key to be pressed, but remembers which finger is supposed to press the key.  In Interval Loader, The keyboard shortcuts for each label are "mapped" to the finger which would most often press that scale degree on the piano keyboard.

Many training methods teach the student to associate a printed note with a physical movement.  The student sees a note, presses the corresponding key, and then hears the sound.  This is backwards.  A person with perfect pitch plays a musical instrument in the same way that you type on your computer keyboard-- by hearing the sound in their head and then "finding the sound" on the keys.  With Interval Loader, you hear the sound first and find the key afterward.  This practice should help you to play by ear and to improvise, as well as improve your overall musical production.