If you go up a perfect 5th from D, what note do you land on?

Let’s take a visual approach to answering this question. If you look at a piano keyboard, you’ll see a repeating pattern of white keys and black keys—in this pattern, you’ll notice that there are twelve distinct notes, each with a unique position on the keyboard, and each with its own letter name. To find any interval, count the number of keys you must travel, including both black and white keys, between your starting and ending...

Let’s take a visual approach to answering this question. If you look at a piano keyboard, you’ll see a repeating pattern of white keys and black keys—in this pattern, you’ll notice that there are twelve distinct notes, each with a unique position on the keyboard, and each with its own letter name. To find any interval, count the number of keys you must travel, including both black and white keys, between your starting and ending note. Every interval consists of a certain number of half steps, the shortest distance between two notes. For example, a perfect fifth consists of seven half-steps—starting on the note D, this will lead you to the note A.

Another good trick to remember is that for every white key except “B,” a perfect fifth is five white keys away if you include the starting note. For example, D is a perfect fifth up from G, E is a perfect fifth up from A, and, in response to your question, D is one perfect fifth up from A!