The Circle of 5ths in 12 minutes

hello everybody today is the day you're finally going to understand the circle of fifths i'm going to explain how you put one together why it matters to you and how it can help you if you are an improvising musician songwriter composer or something like that now mysteriously the whole point of the circle of fifths is to give you a sort of graphic a picture which helps you understand the relationship of one key to another so you can see which ones are close together and which ones are further apart but for something which is supposed to make life simpler an awful lot of people find it very very baffling as though they're standing on the top of a mountain looking out in fog with sunglasses facing in the wrong direction so what i'm going to do today is whip off the sunglasses get rid of the fog and point you in the right direction so you understand how the whole thing works let's get started here is a circle it's divided into 12 segments 12 is a magic number you may remember because if you look at your keyboard an octave is divided into 12 half steps look 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 and then back to one again half steps 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 half steps together and you got a whole step or a tone so that to there is a tone that to there is a semitone whole tone whole step half step that will become relevant very quickly okay so let's put let's say for the sake of argument middle c um at the top of the circle of fifths right um now how you build the circle of fifths is relatively straightforward as long as you know uh how to do scales so let's start with c major here we go so we're going to go up five notes up the scale of c major so which is pretty straightforward because c major it's just white notes on the piano okay right so let's let's start on c okay and go up um five notes one two three four five so five takes us to g okay now the key is when you go round five notes to the next one there we go to g what we're going to start on on this one now is g in the key of g so we're going to play a scale of g starting on g ready okay now up five from there one two three four five which takes us to d so yep d is the one which goes next so as you go around each one becomes the new starting note in the new key okay so this as i say this is not about notes it's not about chords it's about keys and how they relate to each other so when you fill the whole thing and it looks like that now what's going on there is that as you go round the circle uh the keys become more and more different until when the time you get to the bottom they've got almost nothing in common whereas the ones at the top have got lots in common and that's the point because if you're an improvising musician composer songwriter whatever you need to know what keys are close to each other so if you're going to try and change key or you want to you know the bridge to your song wants to be in a different key what are the ones which are going to be closest to you and which of the ones are going to be furthest away and most jarring and this is really what it's all about um so the ones closest together i've got lots in common and the ones furthest away have got very little in common this is how it works in practice so if we go back to that scale thing again this is why i said you know the whole so remember scale is merely a pattern of intervals if you want to play a scale start on c and then what you're going to do is you're going to go if you're american whole step whole step half step whole step whole step whole step half step so two whole steps and a half step three whole steps and a half step if you're in uk hello everybody um we're going to talk about whole tones and semitones so you 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 will always get a major scale because that's what a major scale is if we start on c and you go whole step whole step half step whole step whole step whole step half step you can play the major scale just on the white notes so far so good um if we now go and start on g for example okay there we go start there let's do hole step whole step half step whole step whole step now the next whole step look takes us to a black note which is f sharp so in order to be able to play the scale of g major we have to use an f sharp one sharp okay hmm what happens if we go one step round the circle fifth to d let's start on d whole step whole step let's do the european version this time tone tone takes us to the f sharp semitones tone tone another tone takes us to that c sharp there so in order to play d major we have to use two sharps so c has no sharps and all white notes g has one sharp one black note d has two take a wild guess how many sharps you need to play a scale of a correct how many sharps do you need to play e major correct four so as you go around you increase the number of sharps but it's more than that what you're not just increasing the number of shots every time you do that you're changing one note in the scale which makes it one note different more different to the scale where you started so we started out with all white notes and by the time we end up right at the bottom of the circle of fifths it's every single note is different that's the whole point see what i mean that the circle of fifths is all about um is about keys not notes or chords and it's about which chords which scales and keys are similar and which ones are different that's really the whole point of the thing that's what it's all about so there it is laid out and you can see when you get to the overlappy bit at the bottom it's a right car crash because uh c-sharp and d-sharp over a d-flat overlap so one has five flats the other has seven sharps and and you can see that this real mess at the bottom don't worry about that for the time being so looking at this in so why does this matter um and how can you think about it okay so look if c is your immediate family your brothers and sisters mom dad all the rest of it okay one step out those are your friends those are the people you've asked you into a party at christmas or whatever or whatever other celebration you have um going one out from that um uh are these your facebook friends your instagram followers whatever then one out from that oh these are some random strangers you play online games with okay by the time you get down to the bottom and this is the interesting this is like um online dating hell so the algorithm's gone wrong um and you're going you know c is going out for a nice drink with f sharp and oh hello uh how are you um i gather you're a fellow vegan oh no actually i'm a cattle farmer or embarrassing silence uh well at least uh we both love opera i know i'll have hip hop and crunk even longer in paris silence so the point is from one side of the circle to the other is dating hell whereas close together is hey you're great you know like you know that's this is really weird why should i go down this road anyway it that's really what the circle of fifths is about it's a guide to dating there is an inner circle oh no just when i was getting it no it's all right you still got it you still got it still got it do you remember uh when i was talking about in the last video um relative miners a relative miner um is not your uncle who works in a stop it guy stop it is it works in a coma um it's this um it's a minor scale which shares the same notes as the major scale so if you start with c for example as we're quite fond of c major what minor scale can you use which just uses the white notes correct those of you who've been paying attention to how to write learn music theory a minor so if you start on the a you can play a natural minor scale in a and so they use exactly the same notes and this happens all the way around the circle so for example if we look at g it says here apparently that if we use the same notes as g major we can play an e minor natural scale okay and lo and behold so we can so the inner circle are the relative miners and you will notice of course not surprisingly they also go up by a fifth each time okay so far so good now you remember when we started however many minutes ago that was that i said oh you've got to think about these as keys they're not notes or chords or okay let's just for one moment set that to one side and say let's think about them as chords now do those three uh chords up the top look remotely familiar [Music] c f and g indeed anybody who's tried to play songs or you know on a guitar or anything else we'll know that chords one four and five are pretty much the center of the universe you know if you can play one four or five you can play almost anything okay those are right next door to each other one four and five are there best buddies next which oh now let's look at those relative miners uh o a minor d minor and e minor so what we've actually got are all bar one the uh chords you can form on the white notes in c major so if you look at c there's a c major triad here sure should we try that one see there's a c major triad d d minor e minor f major g major a minor and the one we don't mention b diminished before getting back to c but you see how the circle of fifths now tells you what chords are going to what chords and what keys are going to be most close to each other which ones you're going to find it easy to kind of schmooze your way into so if you're not working in c you're in a for example this tells you that a d and e are both good chords to use and they're also easy keys to transition into and that the minor chords you should be looking at a b minor f sharp minor and c sharp minor this is where it starts to get useful uh you're now saying to yourself is that it is that it that's all there is to it i got it now but i don't quite understand why it's so useful as you go on you will start when you're starting to write something you're trying to think of things through it just gives it a bit of shape and structure so when you finally uh you're trying to get out of that one four five or one five six four chord progression thing you're looking for interesting things as we all do hopefully um what you're actually going to do is maybe think about the circle of fifths as a way of oh yeah yeah okay i can think of some interesting directions to go in there you go that's the circle of fifth for you that's all there is to it really i mean uh i told you are you now are you still standing on top of a mountain looking at the fog with your sunglasses on looking in the red wrong direction no you're not if you like this uh slightly eccentric approach to music theory you might like my course learn music theory you'll find details of it underneath this video and if this is the kind of way you enjoy learning music theory then why aren't you subscribed oh you are great you're a member of the secret brotherhood of learn music theory people right that's all i've got for you for today um any questions or miss up understandings or anything else post them in the comments underneath and i'll do my best to answer see you soon bye

Channel: Guy Michelmore

Views: 137,905

Keywords: thinkspace, education, music, film, scoring, games, television, composition, composer, guy michelmore, guy, michelmore, thinkspace education, music education, music theory, circle of fifths, the circle of fifths made clear, the circle of fifths piano, the circle of fifths explained, music theory for beginners, learn music theory, music theory in 12 minutes, music teacher, music theory for dummies

Id: QPCJZUmX4ag

Length: 12min 27sec (747 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021