7 Ways To Actually Use the Circle of 5ths

A couple of months ago I made a video about the

circle

of fifths and I got a lot of comments on the video from people asking how can we use this or how can I apply circular fifths to music, so in this video I'm going to go over seven

ways

. different

ways

you can apply the

circle

of fifths to music or something you're playing. If you haven't seen that video, I recommend you watch it first because I go over a lot of things in that video. I'm not going to go into it here, you should really watch it before watching this one, so I'll put the link to that video in the description below and we'll move on, so first let's quickly talk about what the circle of fifths is.

Its full name is

actually

circle of fourths and fifths, but since that's a little complicated for people to say, it's often shortened to just circle of fifths or circle of fourths, so what is circle fifth? ? It's a cool visualization of the 12 tones in Western music and when we arrange them in this specific order around a circle some very interesting patterns emerge the letters written around the outside of the circle can represent a few different things they can represent notes, chords, major scales or major key signatures and sometimes you will see the circle of fifths written with chord names on the inside of the circle and the ones inside represent the relative minor scales, relative minor key signatures or relative minor chords, so we will go over seven different shapes in the ones you can In fact, I can use a circle of fifths in music and you're playing number one.

The circle of fifths is a great way to discover your major scales if you haven't memorized them when I first tried to memorize my major scales. of fifths really helped me as it tells us how many sharps and flats there are in each scale and which notes are sharpened and flattened by memorizing the circular settings. I was always able to figure out what the notes were in each major scale before we

actually

memorized those scales, of course, the goal is to instantly remember our major scales, so if someone says, hey, what are the notes in any major scale, you can say without hesitation e f g sharp a b c sharp d sharp correct, but before you get to that point?

It's helpful to be able to at least figure out the names of the notes in each scale on your own, even if it takes a minute. It's a better way to discover the notes than just googling what the notes in E major are. scale, you will never memorize them if you do it that way, it is very important to work on it in your head or on a piece of paper every time you want to remember the names of the notes in a scale and although there are a few different ways to discover the notes in the major scales, for example, rising in semitones and whole steps.

I still think that using a circle of fifths is the best way because it will be really helpful to have a solid visualization and understanding of the circle of fifths in your brain for other reasons in music as well, which I'll go over in the other six reasons in this video, each Every time you have to think about this circle and visualize it, it will sink deeper and deeper. finish and it will make you a better musician so these would be the steps I would take if I were trying to figure out the notes on a major scale using the circle of fifths.

Well, first I would just think about the fifth of the circle and think about where e flat is on the circle and when you start you'll probably have to draw this circle of fists on a piece of paper very quickly every time you do it, which is totally fine, but as you become more familiar with it. you should start trying to create it in your head because it's actually very beneficial to try to memorize it in your head and visualize it in your head. There's something to that, but when you start, do it on a piece of paper, that's great so that you're looking at the circle in your head or on a piece of paper that you just drew and you think okay.

The flat is in the nine o'clock place in the circle on the right, which means it has uh, let's look at one two. three flats to the right and the first three notes in the order of the flats are B flat E flat A flat, therefore an E flat major scale would be E flat F G flat B flat C and D if you have no idea what what I just did or what I was talking about then, I know you didn't see my other fifth circle video, so go watch it right now because I break it down in much greater detail and then come back again.

The link for that is in the description below, okay, number two. It's a great way to find out how many sharps or flats there are in a key. Now, if you are reading a sheet of music that has the clef written in the music, you can already see how many sharps or flats there are in the clef. signature, so this isn't necessary, but if you were playing a chord chart, for example, that didn't have the key signature written on it or if you were playing something without sheet music and maybe someone would just say to you, let's play this song on the key of B major, you need to know how many sharps or flats there are in that key, so if that person said, hey, we're playing in the key of B major, you can stop and think about the circle of fifth in your head.

Imagine where that b is in the circle on the right and you would say it's at the five o'clock place, so that means it has one, two, three, four, five sharps and you can think about the order of the objects. sharps, which is f c g d aev think about what those first five notes are, you're going to have an F sharp C sharp G sharp D sharp and an A sharp and then you know the notes in the key signature of B major and why it's useful if you're Solo I try to play something by ear, if you know which notes are in tune or flattened in the key signature and the melody is fairly diatonic, meaning that the melody uses many notes that are connected to the key signature, then it will be much easier. to figure out the notes in the melody, if you already know what the sharp notes are in that key signature again, if that confuses you, go watch my other circle adjustments video where I actually break it down in more detail.

Number three, it visually shows you how. close certain key signatures are in each other, so let's think of these letters on the outside of the circle as our main key signatures, okay, and I can see that you see how this key of C major is very close to the key. Right G major is also very close to the key of F major, however, it is very far from the right F sharp major key and what I mean when I say they are close is that they literally have many more of the same notes. in common with each other and more chords in common, for example, note that the only difference between the key of D major and the key of G major is that the key of D major has a C sharp, while the key of G major has a natural C.

The difference between the key of G major and the key of C major is that the key of G major has an F sharp and the key of C major has an F natural, otherwise they have the same notes the key of B flat major for This example has a lot of notes in common with the key of E flat and F and even C and A flat and stuff and when we zoom out, you know that the key of E major has very few notes in common with the key of B flat because with the circular fits we can actually see visually that they're actually quite far apart from each other, so this is a really interesting visualization for us and why is it important to know how close certain trusses are to each other?

When playing a song in, say, the key of C major, it's very common that when you play in a certain key you borrow chords that are from keys that are very close to it, so if I'm playing in the key of C I'd probably You will find some chords that are also in the treble or bass clef because they go together very well because they have many of the same notes in common. I really like to think of key signatures as The Geographic Locations and the Circle Fist really show you that you can really imagine them as different places in a space and, for example, if I'm playing a song in the key of G major and I borrow some chords from the key of D major or maybe moving to the key of D major temporarily in the song, it doesn't sound like it made this big of a change, in fact you probably wouldn't even notice it if you were listening to it very very easily it sounds like it's in manhattan , I just go to brooklyn or queens or somewhere close enough, it has the same kind of feel, whereas if I go from g to the key of d flat it's going to sound like I'm going from manhattan to india or pakistan or china or somewhere very far away and you can actually hear it in the music and it can be a cool effect to switch to a different key signature. that's so far away, you know that you're going to feel it in the music, that you're going to be taken to this kind of strange, strange place and that can have a very powerful effect, so it's really cool to be able to see it here on the circular fist visually. how close and how far apart these armors actually are from each other.

Well, number four, it can show you the relative minor key signature, the relative minor scale, or the relative minor chord. I really don't want to spend a lot of time talking about this video. relative minor because I made a whole video on relative minor and I'll link to it in the description below as well and in that video I talk all about what it is and how to use the circle of fifths to find it as well, but if we had to give a very brief description of which means relative minor, relative keys are two key signatures, one major and one minor, that have exactly the same notes, for example, the key of C major and the key of minor have the same notes in them, the key of C major is c d e f g a b, the key of minor is a b c d e f g, notes that both have no sharps or flats, they have exactly the same notes, they just start at different points, that's what relative keys are and with our circle of fifths you can always move one , two, three spaces with the major keys to find out what the relative minor key is, for example, in the key of C major one, two, three, I get to a, so a minor is my relative minor key signature of a c , what is it? the relative minor of G, so if this is the key of G major, we move over one, two, three, I get to e, then the relative minor of G is E minor, what about the relative minor of D major?

What is that? I move on one, two, three. I get to b, so if minor is my relative key, what about the relative minor of a right flat? I'm going to keep moving in this direction, so one, two, three, f, so F minor is my relative key, okay, what about the relative minor of e? flat one two three I get to that C right then C minor and so with the circular fifths you know that our relative minor keys are written on the inside and the major keys are written on the outside. I'm not going to write the rest of Man, because I'd rather you just watch the relative keys video, but you can see how I move three spaces clockwise and get the relative minor key and why it's helpful to actually know which one.

It is your relative minor. Well, there are many reasons, but just thinking of one that comes to mind if I'm in the key of C major, for example, it's good to know that my relative minor key is minor, so we can go back and forth between those two shades very easily. and that can be a very useful tool if you're writing something, so you can always look at the relative minor key, borrow some interesting things from there and use them in relative major key number five. This is a pretty good one, so the circle of fifths I can actually show you what the diatonic chords of a specific key signature are.

If you don't know what diatonic chords are, I made a whole video on that and again I'll link this one too in the description below, so go watch it, sorry. I know I'm linking a lot of videos in the description below, but I actually specifically made a lot of those videos so I could then make this video, so go watch them and this is like a culmination of all that basically diatonic stuff. Chords are the family of chords that are connected to a specific key. I'm going to show you very quickly how you can find those diatonic chords with the circular fifth, so to do that I need to write my relative minor keys on the inside of the circle, so I'm going to do that very quickly for just a few of these, so let's say that I'm in the key of C major, okay, this is the one I'm focusing on and I want to figure it out. what are the diatonic chords in this key, so the major diatonic chords will be the chords on the side and this one in the center, so in F major, C major and G major, those will be my three major diatonic chords and remember how I said we can use all these letters on the outside and inside to represent the chords well, so here is an example of how we use them as chords to have an F major chord, a C major chord and a G major chord. inside E minor, A minor and E minor will be the diatonic minor chords in this key signature and then B minor, the one here will technically be a diminished chord, a diminished is a type of minor chord if you don't know what that means.

I have a videoabout triads. I'll link it too. Sorry I'm linking so many videos, but I'd rather you go watch it and then watch it again so I can write my diatonic chords in the key of C major, so the chord would be C major, the two chords will be D minor, okay, because c d minor, we're going to go up the scale c d e f g, right, we're going to go in alphabetical order. so c d minor, okay, then what comes after d minor, then e minor, c d e, then e minor is the third chord, okay, then the fourth chord will be right f major then the fifth chord will be right g c d e f G then G major a minor will be our sixth chord a minor and then b diminished will be our seventh chord so b diminished little circle is an abbreviation for diminished, so our diatonic chords are C major, D minor, E minor, F G minor and if diminished, great, so it always follows its patterns, so no matter what key signature you choose on the outside, the diatonic chords are always I'll be around that key signature, which is great and the diatonic chords are really important and useful to know for many reasons.

Go watch the video I have on diatonic chords if you want to know why the number six is ​​great for figuring out how to ascend. or down a fifth or up or down a fourth, so what exactly do I mean? Let's think about a scale or key signature, let's think about our C major scale, so the key of C major we start with C and then we go to c d e f g right g is the fifth. Note that on that scale another name for that fifth degree is dominant, so if you hear people talk about dominant, they are talking about that fifth degree, so the relationship between the one and the four and the one and the five is incredibly important and actually the relationship between one and five is probably the most important relationship in all of music and if you know your circle of fifths well you will have a better understanding and internalized memory of these relationships between one and four and the one and the five and the The reason why the dominant is so powerful is because it really takes us back to the base of one, so it really creates a lot of tension, for example, if I'm in the key of C major, just listen to this, this is my base.

I just played a C major chord. Well, now if I play the fifth degree chord or the dominant chord it sounds like this, so when I play that chord suddenly there's a lot of tension and it feels very unresolved, so this fifth degree really wants you to come back. one's home and so it's a very strong example of how to create tension and then resolution and really that's what happens constantly in music, you know why the music sounds good, why it sounds exciting or you know there's, I mean, there is a lot. There are a lot of reasons why it might sound good and exciting, but when you really break it down, what's happening harmonically is that we're constantly creating these moments of tension and resolution, so when I play that's the g7 chord and then go back to the c, I feel like tension and resolution, it is very common that before a C chord you have a G chord, very often you will have all five chords written before the single chord, this is not always the case, of course you can put any chord in front of that chord of do, but it is something that you will see happen in all types of music and in different genres.

Why is it good to know this well? It's good to start recognizing these relationships in the music you're playing so you can start to identify them better. either by your ear or just by reading it that when you see you know one and five or when you hear it you will recognize it and I identify it as now the fourth degree is important um it's called the subdominant and the The point of the subdominant is that it takes us to the dominant, so Please be patient, so if I'm like this, I'm still in this key of C if I go to the subdominant, which is the f chord, so f is my fourth. degree of C right, so if I'm thinking about my C major scale c d e f right, it's the fourth note in the scale.

I'm going to play that F major F major chord. The f major chord really wants to take me to the right dominant so that's why it's called a subdominant if you listen to it it really sounds like it wants to go to that dominant chord and then the dominant takes us back home to chord one again, so you'll come across this relationship between one and four and one and five in music very often, so it's good to know what it is and what this has to do with the circle. As you remember, this is called a circle of fourths and fifths, so it's literally what's in the name of the circle, so maybe This is the most important use of the circle, but what happens is that when we move in the direction of clockwise, okay, so in this direction we're moving up in fifths, and when we move in this direction, we're moving up in fourths, what do I mean by that? that if I'm in the key of C major and I'm going up, I'm going up to G, so I'm going up C, F, G, right, I get to the fifth note, which is G, so now think about what the fifth degree is?

Sun. We'll think about our G major scale g a b c d ah the fifth degree is d and we'll look there we'll see that it's d now the fifth degree of d is a right so def sharp g a fifth degree is a so what and behold it's next in the circle and as we continue to go up, it works in every way, even when we are, you know, even back at the end when we go from f to c again, so when we go up, we move up. fifths and when I say ascending I mean we're going up so I'm going to c d e f g right I'm not going to c b a g I'm not going to go down from c I'm going up from c so I'm playing notes that are going up higher c d e f g going up so we're going up in fifths okay now If I go in this direction I'm ascending in fourths well so what do I mean by that?

Let's look at that key of C major again, so let's say i' I'm starting in a C major scale, so I have my C and then I want to go to the fourth degree of C. It's going to be c d e f right c d e f the fourth degree of C is f and look, it's right there the fourth degree of f is B flat the fourth degree of B flat is E flat the fourth degree of E flat is a flat so we keep going up and up counterclockwise fourths and going up in ascending fifths clockwise now I don't want this to confuse you too much, but when we move down, when we go to play a note and then we move up down, lower and lower, it would be like playing a scale backwards, when we move in this direction, we move in descending fourths and then we move in this direction. we're moving in descending fifths, so what I mean by this is if I'm starting with this c, okay, so I'm going to start with this c and I want to go down to I want to go down a fourth, okay?

I'm going to go one, two, three, four, I get to the g note, I played c b to g, I'm just going down the scale backwards, but now I'm going down, going down, not going up, so one, two, three, four, now the g is a quarter. down, so if you think about it c, if you just think about the note c, if I move from c to g, it's actually a different distance than if I move c down to g, okay, so this is an important concept for you to understand , I'll show you. you're on a keyboard too, okay, so if you just visually look at the piano, here's my c and if I move up to g or down to g, see how this is a greater distance than this?

So that's why they're not the same, they're not the same interval, so when I go from c to g, I go up a fifth, when I go from c down to g, I go down a fourth, okay? And look, look, one, two, three, four, five, I'm going up to the fifth note of the scale, so that's my fifth and if I go down, down, one, two, three, four, I went down only four notes, so I hope it's not too confusing. I'm actually planning to do a video very soon on intervals, so we'll go into more detail about this um in that video, but it's important to understand that when we move between two notes, it really matters if it's ascending or descending. because there will be a different distance between those two notes if you are ascending or descending, so basically when we move clockwise we move in ascending fifths and descending fourths and when we move counterclockwise We move in ascending fourths and descending fifths, I know.

That might be a lot to take in right now, don't worry too much if you don't even want to think about the descending things right now, you don't need to for now, you can just think about the fifth and fourth. ascending so count the clay if you move clockwise they are fifths Number seven, you can use a circle of fifths to transpose music. If you're transposing something just a half step or maybe two half steps, this wouldn't be the best way to do it, but if you're transposing a song a long distance, um. this could be a very useful tool, okay, for example, let's say I'm taking a song, um, and the chords of the song are uh, so these are my four chords in minor, f, g, seven and c, like this so let me show you how it sounds, so I'm playing an f minor, g, seven and c, so let's say I want to transpose the song to a fifth, okay, so I'll make the whole song a fifth higher, so I'll find the root of each of these chords in the circle, so it doesn't matter what type of chord it is, it doesn't matter if it's a minor chord, a sharp 11.

It doesn't matter what, as long as you keep those other details the same if you're just changing the the roots are fine and I want to do a video soon that's all about transposition, but I'll go over it briefly right now, so what is the root note of the chord? minor? The root is okay, so where is my a in the circle? e a, so if I wanted to move this chord up a fifth, all I have to do is move it up a fifth like this, I just move it one time clockwise to the right, because remember that when we go clockwise clockwise we are moving. ascending fifths, so I go up and get to E, so I would just turn this chord into E minor, so I'll write it right here in E minor, okay, what about my F chord?

I want to raise it a fifth too. just an F major chord, so I'm going to find f in the circle here's f, I move it up a fifth, I get to c, okay, so the next chord is going to be a c, what about g7? I want to raise it a fifth two so find my g and raise it a fifth and it's d so d7 great what about my c I want to raise it a fifth? Well, here's my c, go up a fifth. I get to g, so it's going to be G major, so now if we played this little chord progression a fifth higher, well, it would sound like this in E minor, C, seven and G, and just so you know, this would also work with melodic notes , not just with chords, anyway, one good thing about transposition is that we could change. these chords to whatever key signature we wanted or move them up or down however much we want, all we have to do is make sure we move each chord or each note in the song the same amount so you can just have to change everything in the same amount, so what I mean by that is when we transposed it a moment ago we were moving everything up exactly a fifth to the right, but let's say I wanted to transpose these chords to another key and I don't know, I don't know exactly what It's not even how far away it is, but I just want to know that I like it when it starts with A instead of the A minor that starts with G minor, okay, I like it, I like how. feels like when it starts in G minor um, it moves it to a key that's nice for my singing voice, so I wanted to, I want to move it to that key, okay, maybe that's all you know, so I know I'm going to do it.

First I'm going to change it to G minor, okay, but let's see, let's use our circular fifth to transpose the rest of the chords, okay, so first let's find our A, the root, so here's E A and here's G that I moved to get from a. to G I had to move it two spaces counterclockwise to the right, so I'm going from A to D to G to get to that G minor, so if that's what I did, I just have to do that with all these chords now, like this that, for example, my next chord is an f so I'm going to find f and again I'm going to move it counterclockwise to two spaces, so I'm going to go to B flat and then to E flat, which It means my next chord is going to be an E flat major, so G minor E flat major then my G 7 chord, okay, the root is G, so here's my G again, I just have to make them all consistent, so I'm going to move that one, two, two spaces counterclockwise, I get to f, so I'm going to play. f7 and then my last chord is c, so here's my c.

I'm going to move that one also counterclockwise two spaces so that one two gets to B flat, so now I transposed it to a different key, so now if I were to play these chords. sounds like this G minor E flat F seven B flat cool so yeah, circular fifths can be a cool tool to use for transposition because, like I said, we can, as long as we shift everything the same number of spaces inany direction, then it's great, I hope you found this video useful. I have some worksheets that are available on my patreon. I have all kinds of music theory worksheets and practice sheets.

They are all printable PDF files on my patreon. I also have many ukulele chord charts. will link all the videos I mentioned in the description below. Thank you all very much for watching them. If you made it this far in the video and haven't subscribed to my channel yet, please post one new video per week. I would love to have you here if you like this video please like it and leave a comment or if you have any questions thank you all so much for watching and have a wonderful rest of your day or night.