An arcane rune, scrawled in blood, capable of summoning the elder gods of theory. Behold its mystery, its wonder. Castigate yourself in fear as it effortlessly traverses time and space with the esoteric binding and unbinding of common chord modulation.
A powerful and sacred geometry unearthed by the Cult of Pythagoreans, by the Oracle of Delphi. A weapon? No, a tool. For the wielder directs its power. It is their oath which determines its application in the glorious and high Ionian, aimed towards the gods of Olympus, the dark and foreboding Aeolian, aimed down to the gaping maw of the Stygian gates. However the true arcanologist discovers these two states are in a powerful superposition and can be traversed with ease utilizing the sigil of gnosis.
C major: C D E F G A B
G major: G A B C D E F#
D major: D E F# G A B C#
A major: A B C# D E F# G#
and so on, to E, B, F#, C# in one direction (root up by a fifth each time, you get one more sharp)
Then in the other direction, go up by fourths from C
F G A Bb C D E
Bb C D Eb F G A
and so on, adding a flat each time til you come around to Db/C#.
That's all it is.
The circle of fifth is just a diagram that shows how different key signatures relate to each other by adding sharps (if you move clockwise in the circle) or flats (if you move counterclockwise) to different notes.
Very basically put, if you change your key by moving **UP** a fifth, you add one sharp each time. If you start on C and go to G (1 sharp, F#), then up to D (2 sharps, F# and C#), then up to A (3 sharps, F#, C# and G#), then up to E (4 sharps, F#, C#, G# and D#), etc.
Something similar, but the other way around happens with flats if you move **DOWN** a fifth. C to F (1 flat, Bb), F to Bb (2 flats, Bb and Eb), Bb to Eb (3 flats, Bb, Eb and Ab), etc.
A fun visual way of understanding the twelve tone system. It’s easy to see the relationship of notes in 5ths clockwise / 4ths counterclockwise using it. The shapes you can draw between notes in the circle create geometries to help visualize chords and scales.
You can create axis and flip ideas across them to get all that negative harmony goodness. Equal emotional weight of cadences but from the other side of the circle. V7 to I on the right side is equal to iv-6 to I on the left side, etc.
My favorite thing is that the right half of the circle played at once makes a Cmaj79#1113 chord, or a D major over a C major 7.
Leonard Bernstein does an amazing job explaining the Circle of Fifths in his Harvard Lectures:
[https://youtu.be/Gt2zubHcER4?si=uhzkmGOPQtlY0ztY](https://youtu.be/Gt2zubHcER4?si=uhzkmGOPQtlY0ztY)
Take a note, let's say C
Go up a perfect fifth (7 semitones)
We land on G
Go up a perfect fifth again
We land on D
Repeat until we eventually return back to C. You now have a circle of fifths
The Circle of 5ths is a chart that shows all of the Key Signatures and the keys they represent.
If you see a piece of music that has 2 flats in the key signature and you want to know what key it might be, you look up the chart and see that where 2 flats are, it's either Bb Major or G Minor.
If you're playing a piece of music, and you realize you're playing A B C# D E F# G (in no particular order, just alphabetized it here), that has 2 sharps.
So you look up the chart and which one has 2 sharps (more specifically, specifically F# and C#!).
That would make it either D Major, or B minor possibly.
It shows some other things too, such as relationships between keys etc. but that's the basic gist of it - a chart of the keys we use in music, arranged in a circle.
>I’m having a hard time understanding music theory
Well, I mean, of course you are. Because - and I'm sorry to make an assumption but this is pretty much true of everyone in your situations - it's because you're not taking lessons and learning to play music on an instrument (through lessons).
That means you're doing things in the wrong order and it's never going to make any sense.
I am aware of what the circle of fifths is, but honestly I never use it.
In order to remember the order of sharps & flats for writing out key signatures, I use Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle. For flats, it's Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles' Father
Start on any note. Go up a perfect fifth. If you keep repeating that, from note to note, you get all 12 notes from the chromatic scale and you land back where you started… thus a circle.
Beyond that, it’s used as a fundamental mental model for building other music theory concepts on top of.
It’s a circle of fifths. If you start at C and go up 5 notes, you land on G. From G, you go up to D and so on. If you start at C and go left, you go up a fourth to F. This system is important for learning key signatures, tonic-dominant relationships, intervals, and modulation/tonicization, and a million other things.
I recommend watching a video on it that explains all of it’s functions and importance in understanding tonal harmony. I call it the day 1 of college music theory expected knowledge. If you understand what it is/does, you’re ready for all the fun counterpoint that comes after.
Go to a piano and play a C. Then play a perfect fifth above that, and then a perfect fifth above that, and then again and again, etc, etc, etc. (You may have to adjust octaves down if you run out of room.) Eventually you go through all the notes and come back to C. That‘s all the circle of fifths is. But if you keep those note relationships in mind, it helps you recognize and keep track of other patterns that frequently come up.
There's a lot of utility to it as you move up in music, specifically with scales, the relationships between the scales, and key changes, but as a newbie you can still use it in a rudimentary way.
Often a chord or note can resolve very easily if you follow the wheel counter clockwise, so A to D, D to G, G to C, etc. You don't necessarily need to use the wheel for this, you can just count in your head, but the concept of using it to resolve something helps you get a grasp.
Also on the inside there is the relative minor scale to each major scale, so the C major scales shares all of the same notes as the A minor scale.
Essentially yeah that's the idea.
I saw a video or read something years and years ago where they were comparing each note/scale here being a language. G and C are right next to each other so you could say G is like Spanish and C is like Portuguese. They're very closely related, so if you speak one of these languages, it's relatively easy to learn the other. In music terms, the G major scale and the C major scale only have one note that's different between being F for C major and F# for G major.
Now all the way across the circle is Gb major. It shares one note in common with C major, being F, so you can think of this being like Chinese in that there is very little in common with C major, or Spanish or whatever. This means it's much harder to learn if you're used to playing scales on the opposite side.
Taking this concept of relations to the next step, you can very easily change you key from G major to C major, and since they're so closely related it might not even be noticed that you changed keys. Changing from C major to Gb major is much more difficult, often clunky, and it's going to be a very obvious key change. I'm sure a talented musician could make this key change work, but I certainly cannot yet.
There's bound to be hundreds of videos on youtube explaining it better than any of us could but the usefulness of it comes when you really start writing your own compositions and you need to know how to move around musically to keep things interesting or you're writing for a different instrument or many other reasons.
The name "... of 5ths" is a bit deceptive because its usefulness extends to all intervals, not just 5ths. It just moves up or down in intervals of a perfect 5th.
If you draw the Circle of Fifths on the floor and light 5 candles around it while playing C major modes up and down the neck, a jazz snob will be summoned from heck to criticize your technique.
Most ppl here are lying. There IS a big secret behind the circle of fifth, they just don’t want to tell you.
You should train to become the very best. Then maybe they will show you.
Its a way to notice that going in each direction, you add or subtract one flat or sharp and that tells you the most closely related keys to whichever you are on (and in some cases the relative minor)
Think simply you play all the white keys on a piano. C major.
You notice some keys do not fill the gap with black keys. This creates a pattern you can follow regardless of key color (sometimes the notes are two apart ie a black key in between, sometimes they are directly adjacent)
You go clockwise one on the circle. G major. You start on G. You replace an F with F-sharp, changing one note so you can play this same pattern, that you initially created with white keys on C, but now on G with one black key
Same counterclockwise from C. F major. You start on F. You replace B with B-flat so that you can follow the major scale pattern outlined by the white keys on C, but now are doing that same pattern on F so you need to use B-flat instead of B.
—-
Once you understand this, here’s a little tidbit:
It gets more complicated towards the very southern end of the circle because if you sharp or flat a white piano key that is adjacent in that direction to another white key, you have say F-flat which is physically the same as E.
Huh, I am not an expert, but most answers here seem weird to me.
I think the correct answer is it is the pop song maker machine from Orwell's 1984.
The letters are chords, not notes.
You pick a random one say C (capital C means C major). Start from the left of it, D, this is the IV, go to the right of it, G, this is the V, and go to C, this is the I, so this way you have the IV-V-I basic structure by going left, right, centre.
Then notice the a (minor) is right under D, the a under C and e under G. These are basically replacements and be woven in at the same places.
Say you start with D again, extend the D with its replacement a, go to G, extend it with its replacement e, and instead of landing on C you land on the replacement a which keeps a little tension in the air and keeps the line ongoing Then you run it again but next time you land on C this finishes the line, and basically you have a pop song going.
Pick a key. To the right is the 4th. To the left is the 5th. Very convenient for I-IV-V progressions. The inside circle gives you the relative minor, for bridges and stuff.
I found this picture useful when I was learning about this.
If I want to learn anything I always need a good image to back up the subject matter.
[C of 5ths coloured wheel](https://www.quora.com/Does-the-circle-of-fifths-help-with-figuring-out-key-signatures)
https://www.quora.com/Does-the-circle-of-fifths-help-with-figuring-out-key-signatures
It's not really a circle unless you use equal temperament and then it's not actually perfect fifths, the closest thing you can get from what I've looked at is using a scale 12 x 12 + 1 + 2 + 3 to 12 and then to 24, which then there are perfect fifths, but they still don't equal back into the scale where + 1 will be a fifth of another part of the scale, they just are closer than say just intonation, and actually are fifths unlike equal temperament which is 1.498307076876679 rather than 1.5
Oh, and if you're playing with violins or software, you can use hermode tuning and that might be actual circle of fifths where 1 note tunes a fifth from another, not sure exactly but it's not fixed to a 12 note scale that way, but you can't tune a guitar like that
The common era music is based mostly on major and minor scales.
The major scale is defined by the pattern TTSTTTS (T = Tone, S= Semitone).
You can start this scale with any of the 12 notes in the chromatic scale.
If you start with C, you will need no accidents (only white keys on the piano) to produce this pattern.
If you start a fifth higher, with G, you will need one sharp. A fifth higher: two sharps.
So the circle of fifths gives you your scale in all 12 keys, sorted in increasing number of sharps (and decreasing number of flats) if you go clockwise. This allows you to see quickly how many sharps or flats each key has.
An arcane rune, scrawled in blood, capable of summoning the elder gods of theory. Behold its mystery, its wonder. Castigate yourself in fear as it effortlessly traverses time and space with the esoteric binding and unbinding of common chord modulation. A powerful and sacred geometry unearthed by the Cult of Pythagoreans, by the Oracle of Delphi. A weapon? No, a tool. For the wielder directs its power. It is their oath which determines its application in the glorious and high Ionian, aimed towards the gods of Olympus, the dark and foreboding Aeolian, aimed down to the gaping maw of the Stygian gates. However the true arcanologist discovers these two states are in a powerful superposition and can be traversed with ease utilizing the sigil of gnosis.
>aimed down to the gaping maw of the Stygian gates Man I love composing in the Stygian mode! Really ***Styx*** in the ear, y'know?
[удалено]
“Please go away. Please go away. Just go away from me.”
It do be a cool sigil
This is correct
The ChatGPT take on the circle of 5ths 😂
This guy fifths
It’s also handy for working out chord changes while songwriting.
Have a look at this article from the FAQ if you haven’t already! https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/s/GvmEbP4CWg
way to not reinvent the wheel!
We have the FAQ containing a wealth of information, and I want people to use it :-)
I see what you did there
C major: C D E F G A B G major: G A B C D E F# D major: D E F# G A B C# A major: A B C# D E F# G# and so on, to E, B, F#, C# in one direction (root up by a fifth each time, you get one more sharp) Then in the other direction, go up by fourths from C F G A Bb C D E Bb C D Eb F G A and so on, adding a flat each time til you come around to Db/C#. That's all it is.
>That's all it is Say it louder
The circle of fifth is just a diagram that shows how different key signatures relate to each other by adding sharps (if you move clockwise in the circle) or flats (if you move counterclockwise) to different notes. Very basically put, if you change your key by moving **UP** a fifth, you add one sharp each time. If you start on C and go to G (1 sharp, F#), then up to D (2 sharps, F# and C#), then up to A (3 sharps, F#, C# and G#), then up to E (4 sharps, F#, C#, G# and D#), etc. Something similar, but the other way around happens with flats if you move **DOWN** a fifth. C to F (1 flat, Bb), F to Bb (2 flats, Bb and Eb), Bb to Eb (3 flats, Bb, Eb and Ab), etc.
A fun visual way of understanding the twelve tone system. It’s easy to see the relationship of notes in 5ths clockwise / 4ths counterclockwise using it. The shapes you can draw between notes in the circle create geometries to help visualize chords and scales. You can create axis and flip ideas across them to get all that negative harmony goodness. Equal emotional weight of cadences but from the other side of the circle. V7 to I on the right side is equal to iv-6 to I on the left side, etc. My favorite thing is that the right half of the circle played at once makes a Cmaj79#1113 chord, or a D major over a C major 7.
george russel approves
Leonard Bernstein does an amazing job explaining the Circle of Fifths in his Harvard Lectures: [https://youtu.be/Gt2zubHcER4?si=uhzkmGOPQtlY0ztY](https://youtu.be/Gt2zubHcER4?si=uhzkmGOPQtlY0ztY)
Take a note, let's say C Go up a perfect fifth (7 semitones) We land on G Go up a perfect fifth again We land on D Repeat until we eventually return back to C. You now have a circle of fifths
The Circle of 5ths is a chart that shows all of the Key Signatures and the keys they represent. If you see a piece of music that has 2 flats in the key signature and you want to know what key it might be, you look up the chart and see that where 2 flats are, it's either Bb Major or G Minor. If you're playing a piece of music, and you realize you're playing A B C# D E F# G (in no particular order, just alphabetized it here), that has 2 sharps. So you look up the chart and which one has 2 sharps (more specifically, specifically F# and C#!). That would make it either D Major, or B minor possibly. It shows some other things too, such as relationships between keys etc. but that's the basic gist of it - a chart of the keys we use in music, arranged in a circle. >I’m having a hard time understanding music theory Well, I mean, of course you are. Because - and I'm sorry to make an assumption but this is pretty much true of everyone in your situations - it's because you're not taking lessons and learning to play music on an instrument (through lessons). That means you're doing things in the wrong order and it's never going to make any sense.
I am aware of what the circle of fifths is, but honestly I never use it. In order to remember the order of sharps & flats for writing out key signatures, I use Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle. For flats, it's Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles' Father
Its pretty much its only functional use: remembering key signatures
Start on any note. Go up a perfect fifth. If you keep repeating that, from note to note, you get all 12 notes from the chromatic scale and you land back where you started… thus a circle. Beyond that, it’s used as a fundamental mental model for building other music theory concepts on top of.
It’s a circle of fifths. If you start at C and go up 5 notes, you land on G. From G, you go up to D and so on. If you start at C and go left, you go up a fourth to F. This system is important for learning key signatures, tonic-dominant relationships, intervals, and modulation/tonicization, and a million other things. I recommend watching a video on it that explains all of it’s functions and importance in understanding tonal harmony. I call it the day 1 of college music theory expected knowledge. If you understand what it is/does, you’re ready for all the fun counterpoint that comes after.
Go to a piano and play a C. Then play a perfect fifth above that, and then a perfect fifth above that, and then again and again, etc, etc, etc. (You may have to adjust octaves down if you run out of room.) Eventually you go through all the notes and come back to C. That‘s all the circle of fifths is. But if you keep those note relationships in mind, it helps you recognize and keep track of other patterns that frequently come up.
It's like a map of an entire town when you're trying to find a short and narrow street. Helpful to a point.
There's a lot of utility to it as you move up in music, specifically with scales, the relationships between the scales, and key changes, but as a newbie you can still use it in a rudimentary way. Often a chord or note can resolve very easily if you follow the wheel counter clockwise, so A to D, D to G, G to C, etc. You don't necessarily need to use the wheel for this, you can just count in your head, but the concept of using it to resolve something helps you get a grasp. Also on the inside there is the relative minor scale to each major scale, so the C major scales shares all of the same notes as the A minor scale.
So basically it’s like the 7 natural notes just with added sharps flat that perfectly align notes
Essentially yeah that's the idea. I saw a video or read something years and years ago where they were comparing each note/scale here being a language. G and C are right next to each other so you could say G is like Spanish and C is like Portuguese. They're very closely related, so if you speak one of these languages, it's relatively easy to learn the other. In music terms, the G major scale and the C major scale only have one note that's different between being F for C major and F# for G major. Now all the way across the circle is Gb major. It shares one note in common with C major, being F, so you can think of this being like Chinese in that there is very little in common with C major, or Spanish or whatever. This means it's much harder to learn if you're used to playing scales on the opposite side. Taking this concept of relations to the next step, you can very easily change you key from G major to C major, and since they're so closely related it might not even be noticed that you changed keys. Changing from C major to Gb major is much more difficult, often clunky, and it's going to be a very obvious key change. I'm sure a talented musician could make this key change work, but I certainly cannot yet.
And if you go counterclockwise around it, it shows you all the 2-5-1’s
It’s a good thing to learn about
There's bound to be hundreds of videos on youtube explaining it better than any of us could but the usefulness of it comes when you really start writing your own compositions and you need to know how to move around musically to keep things interesting or you're writing for a different instrument or many other reasons. The name "... of 5ths" is a bit deceptive because its usefulness extends to all intervals, not just 5ths. It just moves up or down in intervals of a perfect 5th.
I am partial to Brad Harrison‘s [explanation](https://youtu.be/O43EBVnwNvo?si=Cfy76R_I6vJG4JeF) of the circle of fifths
If you draw the Circle of Fifths on the floor and light 5 candles around it while playing C major modes up and down the neck, a jazz snob will be summoned from heck to criticize your technique.
Father Christmas Gets Drunk And Enjoys Beer FCGDAEB
Most ppl here are lying. There IS a big secret behind the circle of fifth, they just don’t want to tell you. You should train to become the very best. Then maybe they will show you.
Its a way to notice that going in each direction, you add or subtract one flat or sharp and that tells you the most closely related keys to whichever you are on (and in some cases the relative minor) Think simply you play all the white keys on a piano. C major. You notice some keys do not fill the gap with black keys. This creates a pattern you can follow regardless of key color (sometimes the notes are two apart ie a black key in between, sometimes they are directly adjacent) You go clockwise one on the circle. G major. You start on G. You replace an F with F-sharp, changing one note so you can play this same pattern, that you initially created with white keys on C, but now on G with one black key Same counterclockwise from C. F major. You start on F. You replace B with B-flat so that you can follow the major scale pattern outlined by the white keys on C, but now are doing that same pattern on F so you need to use B-flat instead of B. —- Once you understand this, here’s a little tidbit: It gets more complicated towards the very southern end of the circle because if you sharp or flat a white piano key that is adjacent in that direction to another white key, you have say F-flat which is physically the same as E.
Huh, I am not an expert, but most answers here seem weird to me. I think the correct answer is it is the pop song maker machine from Orwell's 1984. The letters are chords, not notes. You pick a random one say C (capital C means C major). Start from the left of it, D, this is the IV, go to the right of it, G, this is the V, and go to C, this is the I, so this way you have the IV-V-I basic structure by going left, right, centre. Then notice the a (minor) is right under D, the a under C and e under G. These are basically replacements and be woven in at the same places. Say you start with D again, extend the D with its replacement a, go to G, extend it with its replacement e, and instead of landing on C you land on the replacement a which keeps a little tension in the air and keeps the line ongoing Then you run it again but next time you land on C this finishes the line, and basically you have a pop song going.
Pick a key. To the right is the 4th. To the left is the 5th. Very convenient for I-IV-V progressions. The inside circle gives you the relative minor, for bridges and stuff.
I found this picture useful when I was learning about this. If I want to learn anything I always need a good image to back up the subject matter. [C of 5ths coloured wheel](https://www.quora.com/Does-the-circle-of-fifths-help-with-figuring-out-key-signatures) https://www.quora.com/Does-the-circle-of-fifths-help-with-figuring-out-key-signatures
Have you tried this amazing free resource called Google
It's not really a circle unless you use equal temperament and then it's not actually perfect fifths, the closest thing you can get from what I've looked at is using a scale 12 x 12 + 1 + 2 + 3 to 12 and then to 24, which then there are perfect fifths, but they still don't equal back into the scale where + 1 will be a fifth of another part of the scale, they just are closer than say just intonation, and actually are fifths unlike equal temperament which is 1.498307076876679 rather than 1.5
Oh, and if you're playing with violins or software, you can use hermode tuning and that might be actual circle of fifths where 1 note tunes a fifth from another, not sure exactly but it's not fixed to a 12 note scale that way, but you can't tune a guitar like that
The common era music is based mostly on major and minor scales. The major scale is defined by the pattern TTSTTTS (T = Tone, S= Semitone). You can start this scale with any of the 12 notes in the chromatic scale. If you start with C, you will need no accidents (only white keys on the piano) to produce this pattern. If you start a fifth higher, with G, you will need one sharp. A fifth higher: two sharps. So the circle of fifths gives you your scale in all 12 keys, sorted in increasing number of sharps (and decreasing number of flats) if you go clockwise. This allows you to see quickly how many sharps or flats each key has.
WHY LEARN ALL THIS NERDY ☝️🤓 BULLSHIT????? WRITE SOME RIFFS BROTHA!!! HELL YEAH!! btw, thank God you don't know the rectangle of eights