Circle of Fifths HELP!

The circle of fifths is a way of presenting all the keys in music arranged so that each key is followed by the key a fifth higher. Keys (of the same major or minor mode) separated by a fifth (or a fourth if you go round the circle in the opposite direction) are more closely related than any others.

Your chart starts with C major right? The next one is G, which is a fifth higher than C. (C to G = 5 scale degrees)

As you go around the circle the keys become gradually more distant from your starting point in terms of shared notes

C major = C D E F G A B C = no sharps or flats
G major = G A B C D E F#G = 1 sharp
D major = D E F# G A B C# D = 2 sharps
A major = A B C# D E F# G# A = 3 sharps
And so on...
Each key is almost identical to its neighbour, differing by only one note. It means you can see at a glance that the keys most closely related to D major, for example, are G major and A major.

You could keep going round and your keys become sharper - but by the time you pass 6 sharps (the key of F# major) it makes more sense to rename it by its 'enharmonic' equivalent flat key which has 6 flats (Gb major). Then continuing by fifths gives us one less flat each time (because really we're still getting sharper). Eventually all the flats are cancelled and we arrive back at C major having completed the circle.

oh poop... It always comes to me the second time someone tells me.

So as I go clockwise it gains one sharp

and if I go counter clockwise it gains on flat....

DOH! Thankyou VERY VERY much.

Maybe this will help.

I understand how this is structured, but what does one actually do with it? Play the chords that are diatonic to each key as you go around the wheel?

I understand how this is structured, but what does one actually do with it? Play the chords that are diatonic to each key as you go around the wheel?

You don't do anything with it. It's just a convenient way of arranging keys according to how closely related they are. Just as scales and modes are arranged alphabetically according to their pitch relationship, keys can be arranged separated by the interval of a fifth to show us that G is very closely related to C whereas F# is very distantly related to C.

Arranging keys like scales would tell us nothing of how closely related they are. The keys of D and Db, for example, have virtually nothing in common despite using the same letters and their notes being only a semitone apart.

In practice, music often modulates to closely related keys and the circle of fifths tells you what those target keys are likely to be.

Other uses include sticking it up on your wall and explaining it in great detail to guests who have outstayed their welcome. Never fails :lol:

Okay, that makes sense. And it makes it more apparent why the I-IV-V progression works so well. :)

Thanks.

Maybe it's not a "use" of the Circle, in the strictest sense, but you can use it to find the different degree chords in any given key. For me, I really don't need the Circle to do this for keys I'm comfortable with like C, D, A, or G, but if I have to play someting in, say Cb, then it comes in handy. Here's how it works:

Find the key that you want to play in on the Circle. There's your I chord.
Move counterclockwise one, there's the IV chord.
Move one clockwise, we get the V chord
Two clockwise finds us the ii (minor 2)
And three clockwise locates the vi (minor 6)

So the Cricle gives a quick way of finding the "usual" chords used in any key. Maybe trivial to some, but I like it.

PS: I guess I never thought about it before, but now that I'm looking at it the following work too

Four clockwise: iii (minor 3)
Five clockwise: vii o (dimished 7)
So that covers every scale degree...so chords built on the degrees of the scale of a key are the ones surrounding it on the Circle in the way described above

Interesting though that only the IV is reached by moving counterclockwise...could anyone explain why that is?

The inverse of an interval plus the interval add up to 9 (major 6 inverted makes a minor 3rd, etc), only the perfect intervals invert to perfect. As you are going forward to go up a 5th, the inverse leaves the 4th. F to C is a 5th, but C to F (the inverse) is a 4th.
Looking closer you'll see some well known chord progressions, such as vi, ii, V, I, also extended to vi, ii, V, I, IV.

Interesting though that only the IV is reached by moving counterclockwise...could anyone explain why that is?

It's because scales overlap.

You can think of a major scale as a set of two tetrachords - each one has the pattern WWH, and they're separated by a whole step. That gives you the major scale pattern WWH - W - WWH

It also means that for any scale, the first four notes will be exactly the same as the last four notes of the previous (counterclockwise) scale - and the last four notes will be the first four notes of the next (clockwise) scale.

Going counterclockwise gives you a scale with one note that's out of key you're in - and it happens to be the fourth note. So going counterclockwise a second step - counterclockwise it's the circle of fourths - you only have one 'step' on the circle that's in key.

I see. Thanks guys.