for me a this point of departurer they should've made this 3 notes based so you have to hear a second interval. it would have been more useful for hearing melodies and chords structures (+ inversions) than going too far in the upper structure which is not very useful. and therefore do the same with the others interval based exercises

Practicing that math to the point that you don't really have to think about it is one of the benefits of the exercise. Yes, compound intervals exist and that's how they are named. What other names would you use for them?

lol. It was the same for me at first. You get used to it. Just keep at it Ra

You'll eventually get used to the numbers, and those are very useful when reading/writing/playing chords with upper extensions, imo.

You can always just subtract 7 or 14 from the number to get the base quality of it. A M20 will have the same quality as a M6. A m14 will match a m7.

thanks people :)

I've just never heard anyone use this outside of an academic context. My brain currently identifies it as perfect 4th + 2 octaves.

I'll just suck it up and hopefully it will sink in.

@Victor Wilburn yeah, I guess I can see that it's quicker to say Perfect 18th rather than Perfect 4th + 2 octaves.

I have a degree in jazz performance and have been a working musician for many years and never heard any (jazz, soul, pop) musician use the numerical language of compound intervals over 2 octaves. In the very rare occasion that that needs to be communicated, I'd still say play a 4th, 2 octaves up because an 18th just isn't in the vocabulary of the people I work with.

@Ra Wilson It's certainly the case that different musical milieus have different favored vocabularies. But there are a couple of reasons I can think of off the top of my head where it's useful to think of compound intervals as different from their non-compound counterparts. First, a m9 compared to a m2, for instance, has a much softer dissonance -- the melodic or harmonic function is similar, but not quite the same. Second, speaking from my experience in choir, if I am trying to find an entrance note, perhaps in relation to a note sung by some other voice part, compound intervals are going to be involved if I'm keying off a high voice part. I'll often write a little note in the score of what that interval is, and compound interval notation is useful there.

It never hurts to have more vocabulary and to keep an open mind to how it might be useful.

Oh, I'm just now catching on to the fact that you are specifically talking about compound intervals over TWO octaves. Yeah, that's going to be less commonly useful, but it's a natural step from learning compound intervals above one octave, and not much of a step at that, once you know the concept of compound intervals in general.

I would also say that the game is less about learning the NAMES of the intervals -- those are just compact ways for ToneGym to name them in the UI -- than about RECOGNIZING them across various octaves.

@Victor Wilburn thanks for your responces. Yeah, I'm totally with you up to two octaves. I'll certainly attempt to keep an open mind 😅