5 Ways to Use the Circle of Fifths | Music Theory

Hi, I'm Ryan Ray Theory, a piano and logic instructor at pind, and in this tip I'm going to talk about the

circle

of

fifths

. You may be familiar with this circular diagram that shows the relationship of scales and keys according to the numbers of sharps and flats. I'll explain what that means and I'll go through some other approaches that are useful to us in this particular tool, so the first way we can use the

circle

of

fifths

is probably the most common way and that is look at the scales and how they're arranged. on the graph so I'm doing a quick Google search to see one of the graphs they're basically everywhere if you search for one and I think I'm I'm going to choose this one and when we look at this we can see that we have an outer ring that has a bunch of letters as well as an inner ring um and then some other symbols on top, so the way this thing is The design is right here, we've listed uh C which indicates C major um and then next to it we have g d a e Etc and then on the left we have the others, so the way this works is um starting at the top. showing the C major scale and we know it's the key or the scale that doesn't have sharps or flats so that's why it's at the top and then this above shows a key signature that's more for formal notation and there's nothing written on there indicates that no sharps or flats were added to give it this scale.

If we found the fifth note inside C that we would get, we would reach it up to G, so looking at the next segment we have a G G, so that's how we see this fifth relationship and if we built the G Major scale we would get the difference that G major has an F sharp if we were to continue this same process and find the fifth note of the G major scale that would land on D, which is the next portion on the circle of fifths and then if we build the major scale from d, we would get that one has an F and a C Shar, so something to keep in mind is as you go through the circle of fifths, you start to increase the sharps and you add one at a time, so C had no sharps nor flats G, which was next to the right, has one sharp, D has two, a has three, etc., so one thing to note about this addition is every time you add a sharp, that same sharp is carries over to the next so when we got G major he added a fshp as we moved to D major a fifth away, that not only retained the F but also included a C Shar as we moved to a major, in the next portion we would have that FP, we would have the C Shar and then the new addition would be the G Shar, so as you go along you add a sharp and then it carries over and keeps adding until the end. above a quick way to remember what the new note is being added what the new sharp is you can remember it as the 7th note of the scale so if we went to G the 7th note would be F sharp if we go to D C Shar is the seventh note, maybe you don't want to count to seven, so you can count one back half a step back, so if we had G, it would be F, if we had d c Shar a gsh e d Etc, so it becomes kind of for a quick way to find out what the new sharp is that is added to the key as you move up the circle of fifths, that is one direction, we can also go to the left of the circle and when we move down a fifth we land in a different one. different note instead of landing on G when we go up, if we go down a fifth we land on F, so there are two perspectives looking in that direction, we can go down a fifth or you can think that going up a fourth gives you the same results , so I'll use the term fourth for now because it will actually come in handy in a moment.

As you go up the circle of fourths or down the circle of fifths, instead of adding sharps, you're actually going to add. flats or another way to think about it is if a sharp was a sharp was going up a note a half step flat takes away a half step so even if you keep going left it doesn't matter what you're taking away a half step if you move to the right you're going up , so if we look at F major our scale is so notice the addition of B flat which turns out to be the fourth note of the scale, so what's so convenient about that and why did I say to remember the circle of fourths? is that as you go down the circle of fourths, the new FL flat added is the fourth note, so if we moved to F B flat is the fourth note, that is the new addition as we continue to move in that direction towards down in the circle of fifths or Going up the circle of fourths we would reach the next one, which is B flat.

It also happens to be that note that we just adjusted and if we build our scale from B flat, the fourth note is the new condition of I, so E flat is now the new flat that is added and as we continue to move in that direction we keep adding the flats and again the B flat was transferred and then we added an E flat, the B flat and the E flat will be translated as we move and then we added an A flat, the same way as the sharps translated over the flats they also carry over, so that's the quickest way to think, um, looking at the major scales, you go up the circle of fifths and add.

The sharps you move down and add. Floors now, depending on the diagram you're looking at, you may have an inner circle of letters, this is the one we can see on the inner part that we see below C is a and then above it it says minor keys, so this inner circle es actually shows us the same type of relationship, but deals with minor scales instead of major scales, so we know that a minor or natural minor specifically does not contain sharps or flats, so since it does not have sharps nor flats, it will be in that upper part. point just like where C is, if we go to the next one a fifth from there, we get to an E, so since we are going up the circle of fifths, that means it will contain a sharp, we already know where that sharp is going. to be, it will be an f and if I do that I will have an E minor scale, so because this follows the same pattern, these are what are known as relative keys, so when we look at C major we can look at this graph and also see that a minor is your relative minor key, if we move to G major we know that E minor will be your relative D major B minor if we move in the other direction F major D minor will be your relative B flat major G minor Etc and You could also say it the other way around: a minor has a relative major key of C major.

The nice thing here is that it shows us the same type of collection of pitches and the same relationships, so the next way we can use the FS circle is to find the dionic triads or think of chords of your scale chords within your key , um of whatever key you're working with, so let's look back at C major, so the main point here and we know that C major has no sharps or flats just as a reminder and if we were to construct triads within the key of C , we would get C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, B Di finished before returning to C again, so we are using just the white keys just the notes of the scale to create these triads, that's why they're called dionic triads, they're inside the key inside the scale, a quick way to remember which chords are actually going to be there, they're listed in this table here, so starting from C, if we look at the letters on the left and on the right f and g, we can see that those three refer to the three major chords right C major F major G major if we look to the right a little more D A and E turn out to be our The minor chords and then the one at the end B refer to the triad B diminished, so luckily someone has already done the work for us to build a chart like this, so I'll show it to you if you look up the interactive circle of fifths.

You'll find this circle of fifths page from rans Scholar.com so we can see here, we have C and then we have our f and g d a e and B um, you'll see there's a little arrow here pointing over there, which is pointing. to C, which means this is our focus point, this is the key we're talking about C and there's a little outline here that says your major chords are F C and G, your minor chords are D A and E and then that diminished chord. is B and then what's really cool here is in this inner circle instead of just showing the minor things, they're giving more information related to this content here and it's the Roman numerals or the um relationships of these chords so we can see. that c is the first chord, that's why it has a roman numeral one, the next chord would be D, so we can see that it is a lowercase roman numeral 2, which indicates that it is a D minor 3 minor 3 major 4 chord major 5 minor 6 diminished 7 so this will give you that Roman numeral information that is really useful for doing analysis and seeing other deeper relationships within the

music

and I can take this and transpose it to any key that I want, so if I want to see which ones are the G major chords, click on G, this all changes and we can see that there is G, so these are our major chord choices, these are our minor chord choices and then our diminished chord at the end, so this becomes really convenient to see these relationships and it shows it for all the keys and not only that but it also gives you the correct names.

Notice this one here that says D flat. Look what happens when I go from G major to D major in this graph, it changes from D flat a to C Shar why is it the same note on the keyboard, well they are different notes in terms of scale, so if we are talking about a scale of D major we should have a C, not a D flat, and that's why that's an important distinction here um and that's going to be true as you move through all the other ones, so this is great, not only because we can also see other modes and other scale types, so we have this one that says natural minor.

I can click on that notice that we have. the same group of chords that we had for c major right f c g d a e and yes they are all still major chords, minor chords and diminished chords, but what has changed is that the little arrow now points to a meaning where that is our focus: a minor and Roman numerals. It was also adjusted so that we now have relationships that relate to a minor, so it ends up being a very useful tool. If we look at the first diagram uh that I pulled out, we can see that F C and G are these three portions and they are the three outer portions or the outer ring, those are our three major chords.

Look at the inner circle d to e, they are the same three that we saw here indicating minors and they are in that inner circle that also shows us minors, so here we can now see. all the same major minor chords and then there's a little growth at the end here where B is, so you just have to remember that one part is much more condensed, so there's something else that happens at the same time when we look at the chords, it also tells you shows the notes that are in your scale, if we go back to the interactive circle of fifths, if we look at C major, we can see that these are all the letter names, all the note names that are going to be. within the C major scale, if I move to G, we can see that we get the same thing, but this one shows us a FP, if I move up to D, we will see that we have F and C Shar, this is basically the same information, but spread out so you can see all the notes that you would need to use, so that's another cool perspective, an altered perspective, of looking at your chords because you can see the notes in another way that we can use the circle of fifths. is to see the related keys, we can see the related major and minor keys, as well as other closely related keys that are not far away, if we use this interactive circle of fifths again to be our jumping table, we know that C and A minor are relatives because they share the same notes in common true, they have the same seven notes different correct focal point C major you're looking at C A minor you're looking at but it's the same collection of pitches, which means that if you were going be inside your song or your production and you want her to change from C major to minor, it would be very easy to do that because there's no Clash, they're using the same notes um or if you were to go from one song to another song.

You know, going from C major to a song that's A minor would go together really well because they share the same keys in the same sound. You can also go to other shades that are a little further away and these types of shows. relations with us that are also good Alternatives, we know that G major has that FP, which means that it has six out of seven notes in common with C major, six out of seven is a good percentage, so the transition would not be very far nor difficult. from C to G major, in the same way, you could go to F major, which would have a flat, so again six notes in common, one that is not because they are known as closely related keys and within their production or from one song to another.

You can easily move from these closely related keys because they have enough commonalities that they are pretty smooth, sowhen we look here, this shows us the major and minor areas that would be good to go to, so if it was in the key of C, you could easily go to F major or G major, you can also go to any of the related minor keys, so a minor that we've already seen, as well as D minor, which is relative to F and E minor, which is the relative to G, another way to look at it is by looking at that condensed version where we see that if we're looking at the portion of pizza with c and a, the slice of pizza on the left and right are good alternatives and closely related keys one thing.

However, the thing to note is that I haven't mentioned it being diminished because we don't normally go to a diminished key area like part of a modulation or a key change, it's not common at all, so stick with your major and minor areas and that's a good choice for you, so another way to look at the circle of fifths is to look at it with a slightly different skin or a completely different look, and that is the Camelot wheel, so looking at the Camelot wheel tells us a lot of the same information, the main difference is that it uses a number system to indicate the keys instead of just the letters themselves , so we can see that the 12:00 position says E major. and this says D flat minor but actually it should be C shar minor um because that would be the note relationship of E major and we can find C major here in the adlock position so it's like taking the circle of fifths and just rotating put it on a different position so the way you can use the cloak wheel is to start on whatever key you are on based on the number and you can easily move to any adjacent number so if you are on 12 B you could pass easily to 11b or 1B those would be really easy transitions um you could also stay on the same number but change letters so if you're on a b you move to the same number but like A then 12 B to 12 a um This is very similar to what I was speaking with the modulation of related keys as well as closer related keys or the transition between the same type of pizza slice with the two adjacent pizza slices next to the relationship and one of our other pure mind instructors.

Shan Marcato has a nice video called DJ Tips and Tricks, where he talks a little bit about the Camelot wheel and key mixing and how he approaches that from a DJ's perspective. Another way you can use a circle of fifths relates to another topic. I did it in another video called blend mode and this idea is that you could be in a major key and borrow or shift in and out of the parallel key, so if you were in C major for example, the parallel would be related to C minor. The keys share the same tones, so C major and minor have the same set of tones, not sharps or flats, but parallel keys share the same tonic, so C major and C minor have C as their first note, but they will have a different collection of tones if you know how to use the blend mode or are interested in switching to parallel, you can use the fist circle to find where it is and then instantly know some other information about it, whether it's the notes or the chords you are playing.

We're going to find that if we use C major as a starting point, for example, we see C major and then if we move a quarter in the circle, we find C minor on the inner circle and we can see that we have them as ours. adjacent pizza slices on the right E flat C A flat F B flat G those would be your other key or chord options, plus this is the D diminished. You can also use the interactive chart to find out what your chords would be, but this is another quick way. to find out where the parallel keys can be found so the circle of fifths can also be used to find a couple of other interesting facts, for example if you know the tonic and dominant relationships of ones and fives, we can easily see that from this already is presented in fifths, so if C were our tonic, G would be our dominant in the same way, if a were our tonic, e would be the dominant, so we can see that next to each other you will find tonic and dominant where this It can potentially be useful if you're exploring the idea of ​​secondary dominance, that is, when you use a chord that acts as a dominant within another key that it doesn't normally belong to, and you can find out what that relationship is here. because you can find the kind of five to one dominant tonic relationship, another way you can try to use this is to build chords and if we were to use C again as our anchor point if we're trying to create a C chord, whether it's C major or C minor, we can use the cuts here as a way of counting up to the third that it will have, so if we start at C we already know that the fifth is right next to it, G is the fifth and its triad will be constructed with a 3D root and a fifth, so we already have our root, we already have our fifth, so it's about finding that third and if we have a major third, we will have a major triad if we have a minor third we will have a minor triad, so if you move four semitones to the right 1 2 3 4 you will land on an e, so it also turns out to be the same number of semitones to find a major third 1 2 3 4 3D major if you moved to the left three 1 2 3 we arrive at an E flat, so it turns out to be the same distance for a minor third, which is three semitones, so it may be another clever way to use. this, but there are a number of other relationships built within this, you just have to explore it and see what else you find, so the circle of fifths is a great tool that is really useful for identifying relationships within

music

and there are probably many more than the ones I've talked about so far, so how do you use it?

Do you have any other

ways

that you've found that work for you or show you really interesting things within music? Let us know in the comments and also if you like this video, give us a thumbs up and make sure to share and subscribe. See you next time if you are a music producer subscribe to our channel and stay updated on the latest pind video tutorials, track breakdowns, Elite sessions and more visit us at p mind.com