Circle of Fifths (Basics for Ukulele Players)

hey everybody this is aaron from ukulele underground and i wanted to do a quick video on the circle of fists a few weeks ago um somebody asked in the live stream about the circle of fists and all dream didn't really have the time to go into it but if you really want to get into it he does a course on music theory on uu plus so if you're a uu plus member check out the ukulele underground university course music theory for ukulele and he does a video specifically on the circle of fifths and how it can be used for your ukulele so this video is going to be just a really quick uh overview and a basic use for the circle of fifths so the reason why it's called the circle of fifths is because it kind of lines up the fifth note of each major scale and um kind of puts them in order and it kind of forms a circle so the outer ring of this circle of fifths is um formed when we take we starting off with c uh if we were to write out our c major scale the fifth note of our c major scale is g then if we were to write out our g major scale the fifth note of our g major scale is d and so on and so forth the the fifth note of our d major scale is a and it kind of just goes all the way around until we get to our f the fifth note of our f major scale at c and we're back to where we started and so that's how the outside ring was formed now for the inside ring we got uh we just kind of have the relative minor of that major scale so your c major scale has no sharps or flats and the relative minor of that is a minor which also has no sharps or flats and so they basically they they share the same notes but um they start and end on different notes so like the c major scale starts on c a minor scale starts on a but they share the same notes and that's why they're related so we kind of line that up put our major and relative minor put the relative minors underneath each of the chords on the outside or the notes on the outside and that's how we got our circle of fifths so this is not any secret or anything you can find this anywhere but this you can print it out it's on in the resource section of uu plus so if you're a member of eu plus this version right here that is kind of like scrolly you can you can uh orient it any way that you want this we if you really want this one log into uu plus and print it out it's in the resource section so yeah you can print out this one and we also have the overlay which is what i'm going to explain right now so print out this and print out your overlay print it on kind of like cardstock something a little bit of heavier weight paper so that you can do this there are holes in the center that you're going to cut out and you can use like a paper fastener or a brad uh that you can buy it at your office supply store line them up put your paper fastener through and all of a sudden your circle of fifths turns into a chord family generator so this is uh say if you know you're working in the key of g you know that all the the chords that sound good in the key of g are right here we kind of blocked out all the other chords and all you can see are the chords that are going to sound good with it right so let's see if we have if we're working in the key of c um a lot of you are familiar with the key of c because it's pretty easy to to play on your ukulele and you'll you'll notice that a lot of the songs that you've played in the key of c contain these chords and that's because it's part of the chord family and they all sound really good together so say if you're trying to figure out a song and you know that it's in the key of c you know that you're going to be choosing from one of these chords and um it might be an extension too you know g7 sounds really good and so so does e minor seven you could add sevens to any of these and and that could be an option as well but um if you're playing in the key of c you know that these are going to be the basis for all the chords that sound really good with c alright so if you're if you're playing a song you know that it's in the key of c um and maybe it starts out with c and then it goes to kind of a sadder kind of chord and you're not too sure what chord it is instead of going through all of the minor chords that you know it it kind of narrows it down your choices down you know that it's probably going to be an e minor a minor or d minor if it starts off on c and then it goes to another happy chord or a strong another strong chord you know that it's probably going to be g or f and then right over here we have our b diminished which it could be uh you know if it's a weird kind of sounding chord it could be a b diminished too but most songs don't really use the diminish at all so yeah probably probably gonna be from your chord family so uh also if you're jamming with somebody and they say that um possibly they'll throw out okay we're gonna be playing in the key of f and they don't tell you anything else and you're kind of stuck you don't know the chord progression but um you can kind of take a look at their fingers and kind of figure it out but you know that you can narrow down your choices by just taking a look at the cord family it's most likely going to come from these cords right here so it's a good resource to keep in your ukulele case printed out probably on some cardstock and put it together and just throw it in your case and then that's a that's a pretty easy resource for you to use also if you are creating your own songs most of the time you're going to choose a key that you like to sing in or something that matches your voice something that um you like to play in and so yeah if you if you you think that the key of e is really good for your voice if you're going to create a song you can create a chord progression pretty easily just by taking a look at the chord family you know maybe you would choose an e to start off with and then you would go to your g sharp minor next to make it a little bit kind of pensive a little sad then maybe an another f sharp minor and then end on a b or something like that and that would be a pretty good chord progression and you'd know um without even playing it that those chords will sound good together because they're part of that chord family all right so that's pretty easy that's a that's an easy way to use your circle of fifths for your ukulele playing so yeah if you're a uu plus member print this out and put it together if you're not a uu plus member the circle of fifths can be found anywhere it's not not really a secret but um yeah if you if you're on your u plus why not use it uh we have pdfs available for you to print out so check that out um like i said the circle of fists can be used for a bunch of other reasons too but this one is just a quick video for you ukulele players especially beginners on how you can use the circle of fifths so hope you have fun with that um this is aaron from ukulele underground have fun thanks

Channel: Ukulele Underground

Views: 195,319

Keywords: Ukulele, Uke, Circle of Fifths, Circle of 5ths, Chord Families, Tutorial

Id: qtSV1dsce5Q

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 02 2014