The Circle of 5ths in 12 minutes

Hello everyone, today is the day you will finally understand the

circle

of fifths. I'm going to explain how you put one together, why it's important to you, and how it can help you if you're a songwriter, songwriter, and improviser or something like that. that now, mysteriously, the purpose of the

circle

of fifths is to give you a kind of graphic image that helps you understand the relationship of one key to another so that you can see which ones are closer together and which ones are further apart, but for a reason. which is supposed to make life easier, a lot of people find it very, very disconcerting, like they're standing on top of a mountain looking into the fog with sunglasses pointed in the wrong direction, so what I'm going to say is do today is take off your sunglasses, get rid of the fog and point yourself in the right direction so you understand how it all works, let's start here is a circle that is divided into 12 segments 12 is a magic number that you may remember because if you look at your keyboard an octave is divided into 12 semitones look 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 and then returns to one again semitones or semitones so that distance there is a half step or a semitone that distance there is a half step or a semitone, put two semitones together and you get a full step or a tone, so there is a tone, there is a semitone, a full tone, a full step, a half step that will become relevant very quickly, okay, so, let's say, for the In for the sake of argument, half cum at the top of the circle of fifths right now, how you construct the circle of fifths is relatively simple as long as you know how to do scales, so let's start with C major, here we go, so we're. we're going to go up five notes on the C major scale, which is pretty easy because C major is just white notes on the piano, okay, so let's start on C, okay, and let's go up five notes one, two, three, four, five, so five takes. let's go to g, okay now the key is when you round five notes up there we go to g, what we're going to start with this now is g in the key of g, so we're going to play a scale of g starting on g done, okay , now go up five from there one two three four five which takes us to d so yeah, d is the next one, so as you go, each one becomes the new starting note in the new key, okay, so this , like I say, it's not about notes, it's not about chords, it's about keys and how they relate to each other, so when you fill everything in and it looks like this, now what happens there is that as you go around the circle, eh, The keys become more and more different until, when you get to the end, they have almost nothing in common, while the ones above have a lot in common and that's the point because if you are an improvising musician, composer, whatever you are.

I need to know which keys are close to each other, so if you're going to try to change the key or want to know that the bridge of your song wants to be in a different key, which ones will be closest? you and which of the two is going to be furthest and most discordant and this is what it's really about um so the ones closest I have a lot in common and the ones furthest away have very little in common that's how it works in practice so yeah we come back to that scale thing again, that's why I said you know the whole, so remember that the scale is just a pattern of intervals if you want to play a scale that starts on c and then what you're going to do. what are you going to do if you're American whole step whole step half step whole step whole step whole step half step so two whole steps and half step three whole steps and half step if you're in the UK hello everyone um let's talk about whole tones and semitones, so go tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone two sones and a semitone three tones in the semitone if you play that order of intervals and start anywhere on the keyboard, you'll always get a major scale because that's what it is a major scale if we start on c and you go full step full step half step full step full step full step half step you can play the major scale only on the white notes so far so good um if now you go and start with g for example it's okay, let's start there, let's do a whole step, a whole step, a whole step, a whole step, a whole step, now the next whole step takes us to a quarter note which is F sharp, so in order to play the G major scale we have to use an F sharp a sharp okay hmm what if we step around the fifth circle to D let's start with D full step full step let's do the European version this time the pitch the pitch takes us to the f sharp semitones tone tone another tone takes us to that C sharp there so to play D major we have to use two sharps so c has no sharps and every white note g has one sharp and a quarter note d has two guess how How many sharp objects do you need to touch?

Every time you do that you are changing a note in the scale, which makes it a different note more different than the scale where you started, so we start with all the white notes and when we end up right at the bottom of the circle of fifths it is that every note is different, that's the point, see what I mean, that the circle of fifths is about keys, not notes or chords, and it's about which chords, which scales and keys are similar and which are different, that's really The point of all this is what it's about, so there it's laid out and you can see when you get to the overlay part at the bottom, it's a car crash on the right because, uh, C sharp and D sharp on a D flat. they overlap so one has five flats the other has seven sharps and you can see there's a real mess at the bottom don't worry about that for the moment so look at this so why does this matter and how can you think about it? okay, so see if c is your immediate family, your brothers and sisters, mom, dad, everything else, okay, one step, those are your friends, those are the people you invited to a party Christmas or whatever or any other celebration you have.

Get it out of there um uh, are these your Facebook friends, your Instagram followers, whatever, so one of those, oh, these are some random strangers that you play online games with, okay when you get there in the end and this is what is interesting? It's like online dating hell, so the algorithm went wrong, and you know, c's going out for a nice drink with a strong f and, oh, hi, how are you? I assume you're a fellow vegan, oh no actually. I'm a cattle farmer or a shameful silence uh well at least uh we both love opera.

I know I'll have hip hop and crunk even longer in Silent Paris, so the point is that up and down the circle there are hellish dates while we're around. together it's hey, you're great, you know, you know, this is really weird, why should I go down this path anyway, that's what the circle of fifths is really about, it's a guide to dating, there's an inner circle, oh no, just when I was getting it no, it's okay you still have it you still have it you still have it do you remember uh when I was talking in the last video about relative miners a relative miner um isn't that your uncle who works at a stop it guy , for es, it works in comma, um, is this, um, it's a minor scale that shares the same notes as the major scale, so if you start with C, for example, since we really like C major, what minor scale can you use that just uses? white notes correct those of you who have been paying attention to how to write, learn music theory in A minor, so if you start in A, you can play a natural minor scale in A, and then you use exactly the same notes and this It happens in everyone. the way around the circle, so, for example, if we look at G, here it apparently says that if we use the same notes as G major we can play a natural scale of E minor, okay and lo and behold we can, so the circle internal is relative. miners and of course you will notice that it is not surprising that they also increase by a fifth each time.

Well, so far, so good. Now you remember when we started, many

minutes

ago, but I said, "Oh, you have to think of these as keys." They're not notes or chords or okay, let's put that aside for a moment and say, let's think of them as the chords, now those three uh chords at the top look remotely familiar c f and g, in fact, anyone who has tried to play songs or you. You know, on a guitar or anything else, we'll know that the one, four, and five chords are pretty much the center of the universe, you know, if you can play a four or a five, you can play almost anything, okay, they're one next to the other. four and five, are there best friends next?

Oh, now let's look at those relative miners, uh, or in D minor and E minor, so what we actually have are all the chords, except one, that you can form on the white notes in C major, so if you look at C , there's a C major triad here, surely we should try that one, we see there's a C major triad D D minor E minor F major G major A minor and the one we didn't mention b diminished before going back to C, but you see how the circle of fifths now tells you which chords go to which chords and which keys will be closest to each other, which ones will be easy for you to chat with, so if you're not working on c, you're on a, for example, this tells you that a d and e are good chords to use and they are also easy keys to transition to and the minor chords you should look at are b minor, f sharp minor and c sharp. minor, this is where it starts to come in handy.

Now you're telling yourself that's all there is. I understand it now, but I don't really understand why it's so useful. As you progress, you will. When you start writing something, you try to think about things, it just gives it a little bit of shape and structure, so when you finally try to get out of that one four five or one five six four. The chord progression thing you're looking for interesting things like we all do, hopefully, um, what you're really going to do is maybe think of the circle of fifths as a way of, oh yeah, yeah, okay, I can.

Think of some interesting directions to follow. There you go, that's the circle of the fifth for you, that's all there is to it, I really mean, I told you, now you're still standing on top of a mountain looking at the fog with your sunglasses facing in the wrong red direction? You're not, if you like this slightly eccentric approach to music theory you might like my course on learning music theory. You'll find details below this video and if this is the kind of way you enjoy learning music theory, why not? You didn't subscribe, oh you're cool, you're a member of the secret brotherhood of people who learn music theory, right, that's all I have for you today.

Any questions, misunderstandings or anything else, post in the comments below. I will do my best to respond see you soon, bye.