The Circle of Fifths Explained for Guitar | How to ACTUALLY Understand The Circle of 5ths on guitar

let's start from the beginning and explain why this is called the circle of fifths at the 12 o'clock position on the outer circle you have c this is because the key of c contains no sharps or flats now you could interpret this as the note c the chord c or the key of c but for now this doesn't matter as we travel clockwise we go up in fifths so for example c to g is the distance of a fifth i do have a lesson on intervals if you're not sure what a fifth is but essentially if you were to count up five notes in the major scale you would end up on the fifth degree of the scale so that would be c d e f and g being the fifth degree in the scale or a quick shortcut for guitar players simply play a power chord now if we continue clockwise around the circle you'll continue to travel in fifths so g to d is a fifth d to a is a fifth a to e e to b and so on it's also worth noting that if you traveled counterclockwise around the circle you would be moving in fourths as the distance between a c and an f for example would be a fourth the distance between an f and a b flat would also be a fourth and so on counterclockwise around the circle for this reason you might also see the circle of fifths referred to as the circle of fourths you will notice that at the six o'clock position on the circle of fifths we have what's known as an n harmonic equivalent for example f sharp is one half step higher than f so we could call it f sharp and because this same note is one half step lower than g we could also call it g flat we will also apply this to the keys either side of the six o'clock position so d flat could also be called c sharp and b which could also be called c flat this will all make sense soon this leads us to the order of sharps and flats as you go clockwise around the circle of fifths each key will pick up sharps for example starting from the 12 o'clock position we have the key of c which as previously mentioned has no sharps or flats in its key signature moving clockwise we arrive at the key of g which has one sharp d has two sharps a has three e has four b has five f sharp has six and finally the key of c-sharp which has seven sharps as you go counter-clockwise around the circle of fifths you will pick up flats for example the key of c once again has no sharps or flats the key of f has one flat b-flat has two e flat has three a flat has four d flat has five g flat has six and finally the key of c flat which has seven flats in total so we have our sharp keys clockwise and our flat keys counterclockwise it's important to note that 7 is the maximum amount of sharps or flats allowed in a key signature but we'll discuss this later to know which sharps are in each key is easy let's go back to the key of g which has one sharp to figure out what this is you could simply jump over the previous key going anti-clockwise to reveal f so the key of g has one sharp this being f sharp if you did this once more but for the key of d which has two sharps you would jump over g and back to f and this time includes c so the key of d has two sharps f sharp and c sharp and once more but this time in the key of a which has three sharps jumping over the previous key being d would now reveal f c and g being the three sharps in the key of a so f sharp c sharp and g sharp you would now simply continue to do this until you get to the key of c sharp which would contain the maximum amount of sharps allowed in a key this method works and is important to understand but there is a quicker way this being the order of sharps if you laid the order of sharps out starting from f you would end up with f c g d a e b which you could memorize using the common mnemonic fast cars go dangerously around every bend so imagine that you needed to know what sharps were in the key of e for example you could say fast cars go dangerously so f sharp c sharp g sharp and d-sharp and remember not to include the key that falls directly anti-clockwise or to the left of the intended key and now we need a way to work out the flats in a key which brings us to the order of flats and thankfully the order of flats is easy simply reverse the order of sharps this leaves us with bead gcf which you could commit to memory by saying bead go car fast and it's also important to note that no notes are skipped this time simply pick up the flats in the order that they occur for example the key of f has one flat this being b flat as this is the first in the order of flats the key of b flat has two flats this time being b-flat and e-flat the key of e-flat has three flats which are b-flat e-flat and a-flat and you would simply continue anti-clockwise around the circle of fifths picking up flats until you arrive at c-flat which contains again the maximum amount of seven flats you should commit the order of sharps and flats to memory either by mnemonics or just cold memorization which i've always personally preferred hopefully it's becoming clearer as to why only the bottom three key signatures are written as enharmonic equivalents while the other keys which potentially could be are not but let's focus on this in more detail to really set this in stone if we focus on the seven sharp keys and now the seven flat keys you will notice that they overlap exactly where the three enharmonic equivalent keys are located giving us different options when naming these keys so you could write a song in a key of d-flat or c-sharp which would essentially be the same thing this would also apply to the keys of g-flat and f-sharp or c-flat and b however you will find that the choice is mostly always dictated by which key has fewer accidentals in this case this means sharps and flats so in the case of c-sharp which has seven sharps versus d-flat with five flats the key of d-flat would be preferred and in the case of b with five sharps and c-flat with seven flats the key of b would be preferred and finally in the case of g-flat versus f sharp which both have an equal amount of accidentals this being six sharps and six flats either would be fine and the choice might come simply down to what group of instruments you're writing for for example a brass section might prefer seeing flat keys because that's what they're used to it just depends now notice how the rest of the keys don't have inharmonic equivalents such as a flat for example couldn't we call this g sharp they're the same surely to explain this we simply need to lay out the notes of each respective major scale so both the keys of a flat major and g sharp major first let's name the notes of the a flat major scale this being a flat b flat c d flat e flat f and g before returning back to the a flat again so all of these make sense and would be easy to both read whether you were referring to these as notes or chords however now let's take a look at the n-harmonic equivalent of the key of a flat which would be the key of g-sharp and it's important to note that every major scale can only have one note of each note name and they appear in alphabetical order which will become clear in the following example this time in the key of g-sharp you would have g-sharp a-sharp c sharp d sharp e sharp and the next note is where the problem lies as stated before we can only have one of each note name in the major scale so we already have a b c d e and g so the next note has to be an f of some kind and in this case to keep to the rule we would have to name this f double sharp so if you try to name any of these keys with the n harmonic equivalents you would find that they would all contain either double sharps or double flats and placing these in the key signature would simply make the music generally impractical to read and for this reason in music we refer to these keys as theoretical keys so in theory could you write a song in g sharp major yes but why would you so hopefully that clears up any confusion you may have had on this subject so that's the outer circle of the circle of fifths taken care of but what about the inner circle while the outer circle shows the major keys the inner circle shows the minor keys so you could say that the circle of fifths is sad on the inside much like me when i find that the like button still hasn't been clicked first let's focus on the c to a minor relationship the reason a minor is directly below c is that it's the relative minor of c this means that it shares the same key signature and has the same amount of sharps and flats in this case zero to illustrate this further we can lay out the notes of a c major scale being c d e f g a b and the notes of an a minor scale a b c d e f g and you will notice that they are the same so the key of c major has no sharps or flats and neither does the key of a minor now this works both ways so you could refer to the key of c as being the relative major of a minor the relative minor of any key can be found by climbing to the sixth note in the major scale so in the key of c for example this would be a or if you would like a really quick way of visualizing this on guitar then play the relative major with your pinky finger and then count backwards fret by fret until you end up on your first finger this note will be the relative minor this relative minor relationship continues around the circle of fifths so e minor is the relative minor of g b minor is the relative minor of d and so on these also move in fifths clockwise and fourths counterclockwise just like the outer circle the n harmonic rules that we apply to the outer circle also apply to the inner circle so the key of b-flat minor could be called also the key of a sharp minor the key of e flat minor could be called d sharp minor and the key of g sharp minor could be called a flat minor but once again you would typically stick to the key that has fewer sharps and flats and now let's focus on the more practical side of the circle of fifths so that you can use this to actually make music and we'll do this by now viewing the circle of fifths not just as key centers but also chords every key has seven chords one for every note in the scale so in the key of c this would give us c major d minor e minor f g a minor and b diminished and if you assign numbers to these you will notice that the one four and five chords are major while the two three and six chords are minor leaving the seven which is diminished this effectively tells you which chords sound good together and allows you to easily write your own compositions and the circle of fifths has a very good way of displaying this as you can see the key of c is placed in the center and will represent the key center and not only this but it also represents the c chord being the first chord in the key counterclockwise is the iv chord f and clockwise is the v chord g the inner circle now shows the three minor chords in the key of c this being the vi chord which is also the relative minor a minor the two chord d minor and the three chord e minor the diminished chord is not included but this is easy to find as it's built on the leading tone or in other words one half step or fret below the one chord so in this case b being b diminished this acts as a great visual aid to figure out what chords belong to a key and their relationship to each other so for example if you wanted to find the 1 4 5 chords in the key of a then you would find a on the outer circle and that's the one chord one space counterclockwise is the four chord which is d and one space clockwise is the five chord which is e and as you move around the circle of fifths this can be used to very quickly work out the chords in every other key i also want to mention that for writing songs in a minor key you would simply use the same chords as the relative major as they contain the same chords just be sure to place more emphasis on the a minor chord as being the center of your chord progression rather than the c here is another way of looking at the circle of fifths to find the chords in a key let's say we're back in the key of c what you need to do now is go one place counterclockwise to the f and then count seven spaces clockwise these are the same chords that belong in the key of c the first three are the major chords one four and five the next three are the minor chords two six and three and the last one is our diminished chord in this case b diminished although this is yet another way of displaying the chords in a key i would say the first method is slightly neater and easier to look at now playing purely within a major or minor key can be limiting as you only have access to seven chords and no matter what you do with these chords it's unlikely that you'll come up with anything that stands out as unique or unexpected luckily enough this is an easy fix you don't always need to limit yourself to simply playing the chords within a key instead you can borrow chords from other keys and the easiest example of this would be borrowing chords from the parallel minor which will give you much more interesting chord flavors and combinations what is the parallel minor well simply put if you're in the key of g major then the parallel minor would be g minor we can go around to the key of g minor and choose from any one of these chords to use in a g major progression for example a very common choice is to use the four minor chord so in the key of g major the four chord is c major and if we look in the key of g minor you will find a c minor chord so within the context of a g major key we would call this a four minor chord you can experiment with as many options as you like from the parallel minor here to find a chord progression that works for you and i want to add a quick note about improvising over these progressions if your chord progression is built diatonically meaning entirely from chords within the key then choose the major scale that they're built from so in the case of a g major chord progression this would mean using the g major scale over all these chords however once you introduce a borrowed chord from another key you will also have to temporarily use the scale from the key you borrowed from to improvise over that borrowed chord so in the case of borrowing from the parallel minor this would mean using the g minor scale over any of the borrowed chords that you chose to use in the progression the circle of fifths also gives you yet another tool for crafting songs or chord progressions and this is being able to see which keys are more related than others and why would you want to know this well this allows you to smoothly change keys for example let's say we had a chord progression in the key of d major and we wanted to modulate or in other words change key then we could simply look at the keys either side of d on the circle of fifths these being the keys of g or a major at a simple glance you should be able to see that the key of d shares four chords with a key of a and also four chords with the key of g you can describe these chords as pivot chords using these pivot chords will allow you to smoothly slip into the new key center without a jarring or sudden change as your ear won't detect the key change until you've settled into the new key this of course also tells you that the further you stray from the original key the harder it might be to change key effectively for example a key change from c to f sharp might be more challenging as they have much less in common this isn't to say that other ways of changing keys can't be used and many other methods are highly effective but i'll save that for another lesson hopefully this lesson has helped you understand the circle of fifths and its many uses feel free to leave your thoughts or questions down in the comments and if you want to support the channel check out my circle of fifths merch link in the description thanks for watching once again and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Samjamguitar

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Id: YFe7Jchras0

Length: 15min 12sec (912 seconds)

Published: Fri May 13 2022