![]() What can I learn from the circle of fifths? Besides being aware that occasionally people look at it this way around and call it “the circle of fourths," this is just an incidental fact of the symmetry of music theory that you should note and remember. You’ll also notice that if you work upwards through the table instead of down, everything jumps in perfect fourths rather than perfect fifths. It then works down the flat keys-from Gb major (six flats) down through F major (one flat) to C major again. The article about secondary chords is a good starting poing in this exploration.Doing this naturally arranges the keys in a sequence, as you’ll see, of moving up through ‘the sharp keys.’ For example, C major has no sharps, G major has "one sharp" (F#) and so on. Once you find any other path from one key to another you can trace it's form on the circle and transpose it to any key you're in or you want to move to. Neighbouring sectors include scales that are easy to borrow chords from and to travel to with simple moves like common-chord modulation. This scheme helps find interesting chord progressions either in one predefined key or traversing different keys in complex modulation movements. The next step of the inner circle shows Bm and it can represent the vi degree – the leading tone and it's diminished chord Bdim (Bb5). The inner circle will show you the Dm chord for the ii degree, Am as the vi degree and the tonic of the parallel minor scale and Em as the iii degree of the C major scale. So for C major scale you'll get C major chord as the tonic I degree, F major to the left as the IV subdominant degree, and G major chord as the dominant V degree to the right of the tonic. The vi diminished chord of a major scale isn't shown in the main sector, but you can find a reminder of it one step to the right in the inner circle. The inner circle shows the minor chords of the major scale – the ii, the vi and the iii degrees show in a clockwise succession. To the right lays the dominant V major chord. ![]() On the outer circle to the left of it you find the IV degree - the subdominant – the major chord starting from the note a fourth apart from the tonic. Choose the one on the outside and you'll get the scale degrees numbers for the major scale. You can choose either major or minor basic scale by pressing on the little circles outside or inside the rings. The highlighted sector of 90 degrees includes 6 points of the circle that represent 6 main degrees of the scale starting from the notes in the middle of the sector. Take C# minor and get E major at one glimpse. It has the same notes, but start from another tonic and have the opposite tonal quality. Considering each position of the circle as a scale we instantly get two parallel major and minor keys. With this placement we get quite a useful tool. Here we have two circles of fifths rotated by a minor third interval. Moving counter-clockwise from C could be thought of as descending by a fifth to F, or ascending by a fourth to F. Moving counterclockwise, the pitches descend by a fifth, but ascending by a perfect fourth will lead to the same note an octave higher (therefore in the same pitch class). Its design is helpful in composing and harmonizing melodies, building chords, and modulating to different keys within a composition. Musicians and composers often use the circle of fifths to describe the musical relationships between pitches. The circle of fifths organizes pitches in a sequence of perfect fifths, generally shown as a circle with the pitches (and their corresponding keys) in a clockwise progression. The double circle of fifths as a tool to explore chords in tonal space
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