Circle Of Fifths On Guitar

[Music] how could a channel like this be complete without a video on the circle of fifths and the answer is it probably can't be so here we go the circle of fifths is like legendarily confusing for guitarists and there are two reasons for that one is the construction of the guitar itself so if you think about a piano it's got all the notes laid out linearly well the guitar does too but it's got it done in six different times where the piano is only once here's a great example here two notes here's a c note on the d string tenth fret and a g note on the 12th fret of the g string on a piano there's one place to play that on the guitar i can play it here i can play it here i can play it here i can play it here and i can play it way up here so it's just harder to see intervals on the guitar because they're laid out across the strings rather than in a linear fashion they're linear here too but they're also expressed across the strings a little bit more difficult but it's worth it because it's a guitar so that's awesome the other thing the other reason why it's so confusing is that the circle of fifths is a very very deep subject it's based on a very simple mathematical principle but as that plays out the context and the resulting mathematical constructs and relationships is incredibly deep so without context you can get a piece of information from inside this depth somewhere somebody can say to you hey did you know that if you play the circle of fifths backwards it's actually in fourths that's true but without context you're like uh what or they can say oh i keep track of the order of the sharps and the flats using the circle of fifths okay you're a martian what's i don't understand what you're talking about right without some sort of proper context all of that information is lost the good news is that while it's an extremely deep subject it has a lot of a lot of depth of relationship to to be expressed it's based on an extremely narrow mathematical construct that's very very easy to understand and extremely easy to map on the fretboard welcome back to the channel my name is chris today you will learn how to map the circle of fifths directly under the fretboard we're going to use this as sort of a fundamental mapping of the basic core mathematical function of the circle of fifths before we map it i'm going to explain what it is then we're going to map it directly on the fretboard in two different ways and we'll see some interesting stuff there and then i'll give you some very very practical uses about how guitar players how i as a guitarist use the circle of fifths in a practical way and again this is a 101 right this is the core functionality of the circle of fifths so there won't be an enormous amount of depth but we'll get the core construct on the guitar and once you have that then you can you're going to be able to add stuff to it at all you know at will which is great okay so before we get started mapping it though let me just explain what it is in western music there are 12 tones the the harmonic series is basically 12 tones that we can identify as musical notes those 12 tones are mapped on the guitar from the nut to the 12th fret on every single string you're just starting and ending on a different note right you're expressing the 12 tones from e to e on the e string from a to a on the a string d to d on the d string et cetera but there are only 12 notes right they're laid out linearly on this instrument as well as on the piano the circle of fifths just takes those exact same tones and maps them in the order of a fifth and the interval of a fifth is basically the fifth note away in the in the tonal series in other words if you start on a you go a b c d e e is the fifth away now that breaks down when you get to the whole steps and half steps but don't worry about that too much so you start on one note go up a fifth from that note you go for fifth etc let's map this out onto the fretboard all right let's map the circle of fifth to the guitar first of all here's the circle of fifths i can describe the circle of fifths like this it's the 12 tones of the chromatic scale organized into a sequence using fifths as the interval between each note another way to think of it is start at c and move in fifths until you get back to c right we're just you we're just going from c up a fifth from from g up a fifth from d up a fifth etc so again it's just the twelve tones they're just mapped in a very very specific order okay now i want to show you how to map these on the neck in sort of the most guitaristic way we're going to use the e and the a string and we're going to start off by just saying let's use on these two strings let's find the lowest um note the lowest pitch of these notes and just get started once we get a little ways down the road you'll see a pattern emerge and we can then just sort of hook onto that pattern as guitarists we love patterns so on the e and e a string the lowest c note the beginning of the of the pattern the lowest c note is here third fret a string next note in the series is g the lowest one on those two strings the lowest g is here the next note in the series is d that's the lowest one we can find on the e and the a string the next note the series is a now i'm going to stop here and just show you something that's already a pattern we can already see a pattern arising let's just see if it plays out we're on a the next note the series is e then b then f sharp see what's going on here c sharp g sharp d sharp a sharp f and then we're back to c [Music] so you can see the pattern right [Music] the problem with the pattern as with all patterns for guitar is that once you get the pattern down now what note am i on here right once you get the pattern down it can just become muscle memory very very quickly so the challenge here is to stay awake right stay found don't get lost make sure that when you go up the circle c g d a e b f sharp c sharp just make sure you understand where you are on the circle when you when you map it to the fretboard ensure that you say the notes to yourself and you see the relationship that's going to be very very important and as a guitarist you should probably always be doing that but you know as guitarists we also fall into the sort of pitfalls and habits of just like here's a bunch of dots this exercise and specifically this this uh series the the circle of fifths you want to just stay awake to it okay now i'm gonna just do something interesting and show you an interesting result that suggests the depth of the circle of fifths we're gonna just take that same series we just did and we're gonna map bar chords onto that series so when we're playing notes on the a string we're going to bring on this a shape bar chord and when we're playing notes on the e string we're going to bring along this e shape bar chord so listen to this [Music] it's just the first five notes of the of the circle of fifths with major barre chords mapped to it it just happens to be the chord progression from hey joe written by jimi hendrix right so you can see already just doing that that the circle of fifths is also sort of the keeper of this interesting chord progression information jimi hendrix just played it used it wrote a hit song so i'm just showing you one little peek into the depth when you map the circle of fifths and then you start to you know sort of map all of the major scales in this order all kinds of insanely cool stuff starts to happen and that's that depth that we're talking about okay but we're not going to get too far into that this is a 101 session i'm just mapping it on the fretboard showing you how to how to how to see it the next thing we want to do and this is sort of one of the harder things to do because the guitar is so pattern oriented is to map it to a single string and ultimately what you want to do is to map it to every single string but we're just going to start on the e string for example so let's find our c here's a c right here down to g then d then a then e then b then f sharp then c sharp then g sharp then d sharp then a sharp then f and then back to c now you can see hopping around in those seven fret hops and just like going back and forth it's a little hard to do it's a little hard to see intervals that far apart on a single string it's not necessarily the easy way to map it but it's definitely something that you want to do holistically through all six of these strings because it's really fundamentally the best way to familiarize yourself with the fretboard octaves are a really great way to learn how the fretboard relates to itself and thereby map information to it but the circle of fifths specifically on a single string gets you hunting for and finding notes on strings and it just builds some connective tissue and some some muscle memory in your eyes ears and hands that you can't just get any other way it's like that's the only way to get that capability it's really really great the last thing i want to show you is that i use the circle of fifths in this very very practical way and again this isn't about the depth of it it's just about what is the circle of fifths how do you use it one of the best uses for the circle of fifths i think is that whenever you get new information you learn a new chord or a new scale take it around the circle of fifths start here play it here play it here here here and here and here and here and here the result will be that new information you've played in every single key and every position on the guitar now you may not ever use all of that information but it sets up a psychological confidence when you have a new piece of information that you've taken around the circle you really own it when you do that and i'll give you an example somebody showed me the c blues scale cool i have a new scale i'm going to take it around the circle of fifths so i just learned it in c here it is in g here it is in d here it is an a here it is an e here it is in b here it is an f sharp here's c sharp blue scale g sharp blue scale d sharp blue scale a sharp blues scale [Music] f and back to c [Music] got a new piece of information here i've just played it everywhere on the neck i'm feeling pretty good about owning that information here's another great example somebody just showed me this chord it's e minor 9. cool i've got a new chord but do i have it yet i can play it right here i'm just going to take it around the circle here's e minor 9. i'm going to take it down to c here's a c minor 9. here's a g minor 9. here's a d minor 9. i'm just using that one that single string mapping now a minor 9 d minor 9 that's where i learned it i'm taking it to b minor 9. [Music] f-sharp minor nine see what i'm doing here i'm just using that one string and i'm mapping it but i'm just taking it around the circle now i've played i mean i didn't complete it but now i've played my new chord in every single key it just makes me feel good just makes me feel like i really own that information there's a very practical use for the circle of fifths again this is 101. we're looking at that very very slim mathematical instance take the 12 harmonic tones map them in fifths what's the result the result is really deep the cool thing now is that whenever you come across any piece of information in that stack of of information about the circle of fifths you've got something to map it to okay so there it is the circle of fifths mapped onto the fretboard now again it's not the depth of the of the subject itself and all of the sort of mathematical results of what we've just done there are implications but it is the core architecture which again is very very narrow 12 notes mapped in fifths there it is we've got it on the guitar now so now if somebody says you know they come to you or you find one of those pieces of information from the super depth of the circle of fifths as an idea and somebody says oh did you know that circle of fifty play it backwards it's actually in fourths now you can go try that right go play the circle of fifths backwards and tell yourself find out why it's actually in fourths when it goes backwards why is that go find out okay now you can find that information and when you see other pieces of information from this huge stack of of mathematical results of the circle of fifths you'll be able to say oh that's an interesting piece of information now that i can see the circle of fifths let me check that out right it may take years for you to fully understand the circle of fifths i'm still figuring stuff out but at least we've got the fundamentals now i've mapped all this stuff out i've tabbed it out that's on patreon in the link below in the description head over there and grab the tabs if you'd like them any support over there is greatly appreciated fuels this whole thing i hope you find this interesting i hope it sets you up to then now be able to digest any context from the circle of fifths that you come across the circle of fifths is one of those lifelong studies i hope this has helped get you on the road for that and i'll see you next time

Channel: Chris Sherland Guitar

Views: 209,626

Keywords: circle of fifths on guitar, music theory on guitar, guitar lessons, intermediate guitar lessons, circle of fifths for guitar, circle of 5ths, guitar circle of fifths, guitar circle of 5ths, circle of fifths guitar theory, how to use circle of fifths, circle of fifths

Id: fiAay-Ld_IM

Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021