Circle Of Fifths - Music Theory for Guitar

Discover the circle of fifths an amazing tool for the music theory student. Contained within it you will find key signatures, scales, chord progressions, and more. In other words, most of the fundamentals of music theory!

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yeah
yeah
all right today I'm going to do a quick
video on the circle of fifths
now first off a few prerequisites and
this is not an easy topic per se so i
would recommend that if you knew the
notes on the guitar and one thing you
can do we have a couple of free courses
guitar games . net there's one on our
notes and you can go there and do that
you just need to note
basically the some of the names of the
notes and how notes work on the
instrument and also i would recommend
knowing what intervals are and at least
half steps and whole steps which is
covered in are also free
getting started with music theory so you
might check those out if you don't know
what those are all right now
circle of fifths first of all I think
everyone knows what circle is what you
might not know what it is so let's talk
about that
so a fifth is an interval and intervals
in music work a little funny
and this is this is how we count
so first off you might see you know c d
e f g and that's a fifth you notice
there's no 0 you might think ok go's CD
that's one de that's too but no it's the
number of letter names really that are
in the interval so the distance from C
to G is called the fifth
let's do another one let's say take g
and you
g a b c d
that's going to be a fifth one two three
four five on the guitar
you probably recognize this
if you see these two notes play together
this is a fifth you might see this
written like f5 or called an F power
cord and if you can count from most
letter names and just count up so like
Sadie
d e f g a gives you a fifth
there's only one exception to worry
about and that's the note B and the
funny thing about be is that it goes up
to F sharp
so remember that has to do with the fact
that there's no be sharp and no be sharp
and both of those are contained within
this space so B - f sharp
all right now next the circle itself so
i took the liberty of pre drawing my
circle and you should do this on a page
i would i would practice doing this
quite often and then what we're going to
do is basically make a clock
so start here I kind of divided up
and too you know for spaces and then I
put the tix in
and what we're going to do is we're
going to start with the note C and then
we're going to go by fifths so a fifth
above c c d e f g and the fifth above
gene g a b c d and so on and so forth
here's our be so we know we go to F
sharp enough to have now at this point
you could call this f sharp and you
could also call it G flat because the
note that's what about that is also one
below
g so i'm going to switch over to flats
and you'll see why in just a little bit
here and keep going so G flat now fifth
above G flat
I'm going to stick with flat so G flat a
flat B flat C flat D flat will call and
then d-flat goes up to a flat E flat
people here d flat F and then if you've
done it correctly you get F and then F a
fifth up is a seat
so that means success now what's the
point of this
it's beautiful circle there but by
itself it doesn't really mean much now
the primary use of the circle is to find
key signatures and scales so let's talk
about those real quick
now most of you are probably familiar
with what a scale is its collection of
notes that fit well together they're
kind of centered around a certain letter
like C scale the root of it is seeing
the notes all time kind of gravitate
towards see and skills are constructed
using whole steps and half steps
so if you remember back to our
prerequisites knowing what those are
would be good so a whole step
basically these two frets on the guitar
and so will see a whole step between
these two whole steps and a half step
whole step
another whole step so all major scales
are constructed from a pattern of whole
steps and half steps and we get a whole
whole half whole whole whole half now
this gives us our scale we have one of
each letter name and no repeated letters
now for the key of C that means
that we have just the regular letter
names now if we do another key let's
take d we go hol hol up
ETF is a half step because remember
there's no sharp so I have to make this
and sharp and i cleverly left myself
space
all right now I need a half step so f
sharp to G sure enough is a half step
one fret
keep going up here we go again
so B to C is not a whole step I have to
make this a sharp to make it a whole
step and then C sharp to D is a half
step so it matches the pattern now this
is a D major scale
you'll notice again there is one of each
letter name there's no F and F sharp
there's no C and C sharp is just one of
each
but there's some accidentals or some
sharps and some keys have sharps and
some keys have flats
now what is often done is we use key
signatures now what's a key signature
well this is an abbreviated way of
describing this scale so since I know
there's going to be one of each letter
name and I know that there's two sharps
I can just say that the key of D has
this key signature
right there and I if I say ok key
signature for the key of D is two sharps
F&C then I know how to make the scale
but one of every letter name and I
adjust
F&C all right now how does this apply to
our friend the circle of fifths