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THE MUSIC THEORY COLUMN PRESENTS:

The Circle of Fifths Explained

Updated: Oct 31, 2019 • MUSIC THEORY

The Circle of Fifths represents a shortcut for all songwriters out

there, given they are willing to overcome the small hurdle of
understanding what they are looking at. Once you have a grasp and
even memorized it, you will dance through the key signatures and
chord changes like it was your own personal playground…

T
ypical discussion about the Circle of Fifths is largely for beginners and
intermediate music theorists, and the tricky part is there's no way to
avoid using other technical jargon that a beginner may not know when
explaining it. We're going to keep it as simple as possible with explanations
of any new terms.

So get ready for a wild ride made easy as we work our way from the
foundations to the purpose and finally to the methods of exploiting the
Circle of Fifths in your songwriting and music theory endeavors.

Here's the honest truth: You may not use this initially. You'll find
more isolated ways to understand key signatures, chord
progressions, and other tricks to keep you on track.

But later, once you have a firm grasp on everything involved in our circular
friend, there is no better organized way to sort it all out in your head on the
fly than this.

The important part is exposure. Knowing this tool exists is half the battle.
Seeing it and working with it over and over is how mastery occurs, just like
playing your instrument and writing songs.

Apply that same energy here and everything else you do musically will
benefit greatly.

Almost all Western music follows the following patterns, and even other
cultural styles follow the same concepts in their own way. It can be used for
tons of modes like your typical Ionian major scale, Lydion, Dorian, Phrygian,
etc. Once you can manipulate it in your mind, the doors are blown wide
open for sophisticated songwriting.

Quick History: The Circle of Fifths was invented by Nikolai

Diletskii in his late 1670's treatise on composition called the
Grammatika. In 1728, Johann David Heinichen improved upon the
design to bring us the modern version we use today.
So how does it work? Perhaps the best way for this to be made easy is to
explain the components and then describe the ways you can use it. Then
the entire picture falls into place. Here is the entire Circle:

Click Here to Download the Printable Full Resolution Circle of Fifths

That's the web version. If you want to print out a full resolution version on
paper, use the link in the caption above. The PDF file will fit right on your
normal 8.5 inch by 11 inch printer paper while looking sharp and crisp!
Laminate it and leave it on your desk, fold it up and throw it in your pocket,
and make good use of it!

Below, we'll show you the best interactive circle (or click here: The Chord
Wheel) that has a spinning transparency wheel you can use in your studio
when writing songs.

The Basic Building Blocks of the Circle of

Fifths
The first of these patterns is the key signature. A key is a set of seven
notes collectively called a scale. The scale is built by a specific relationship
between the notes. These relationships are different depending on if
you're in a major or minor scale, for instance (and it goes deeper!).

When you hit the eighth note, you're back to the start of the scale on the
first note which is called the tonic. But now you are one octave higher. If
you play the tonic and the first octave above it, you'll hear the same tone
twice with one higher in frequency in unison. But they still sound great.
This is called consonance. Due to the mathematical relation between the
notes they sound pleasing together to our ears. It's called dissonance
when they seem to clash.

Chords are built with a grouping of notes played together that are all
consonant and pleasing. The basic form of a chord is the root of the chord,
plus the third above it, and then the fifth above the root as well. You can
then duplicate a note, usually the root, to use as a bass note to form a bass
melody, and you can even invert chords and other tricks.

The entire reason I built the conversation up to chords was to introduce the
concept of the fifth. There are three types of fifths based on the number of
semitones above the root the fifth lies:

Perfect fifths (7 semitones)

Diminished fifths (6 semitones)

Augmented fifths (8 semitones)

In the Circle of Fifths, we only deal with perfect fifths going clockwise
around the circle. If you move counter-clockwise you'll find the perfect
fourth from the root.

Examples for Using the Circle of 5ths

This thing wouldn't have stuck around since the 17th century if there
weren't real world uses for it. Let's take a look at some of them.

CHORD PROGRESSIONS

The most popular chord progression in the world, in which most pop music
recycles over and over is the:

I - IV - V - I

When you look at the progression above, you'll notice two things... these
are Roman numerals and they are all using capital letters. Roman numerals
are used in music theory to indicate notes in a scale and chord and in this
case the chords in the key. There are major chords and minor chords,
which are denoted with capital letters and lower-case letters, respectively.
This means we are looking at the major chords of a key built on the tonic,
the fourth, and the fifth. If you proceed through them one measure at a
time in each of the main 12 major and 12 minor keys of Western music,
you'll recognize each immediately.

Now, what's interesting is if you find the tonic of your key on the Circle,
you've already found the 4th chord and the 5th chord in the key and can
construct a catchy song in less than 10 seconds. Find the tonic of your key.
In one example lets use the common folk key of G-Major. If you move one
step clockwise, you find the 5th chord of the G-Major key. If you move one
step counter-clockwise, you've found the 4th chord.

You can see how this works in C-Major below:

Each key only has 3 major chords in it. You just identified all three almost
immediately with help from our friend, the Circle. You'll notice if you take
one more step out in either direction you find the 2nd and 7th Chords. This
half of your circle expands your chord choices in creating progressions. If
you stick to this side of the circle you're guaranteed to have a nice,
consonant chord progression for your song. Of course you can use others
but it requires some study and skill to do it effectively.

FINDING THE RELATIVE MINOR OR MAJOR OF A KEY

Every major key has a relative minor key. What this means is that both keys
use the exact same notes, including any accidentals (sharps or flats). The
difference is they have a different tonic and the distance relationship
between the notes is changed a bit. Since they are the same notes though,
this distance won't impede you from using the relative minor.

Pro-Tip: One of my favorite ways to write a bridge to a song is to

use the relative minor or major key. It will sound familiar due to the
same notes being used but give you the opposite mood of the
song. It's a nice juxtaposition that you can use as a surprise that
leads right back into a chorus with the right lyrics.

In your mind, all you have to do to find the relative minor of a major key is
to move 90 degrees to the right (or 3 steps clockwise) and you've found it.
To move from a minor key to the relative major is the opposite. Move 90
degrees counter-clockwise (or 3 steps left) and you're done.

If you have a Circle labeled like ours, then you can find the relative minor
key on the inside of the circle, where C-Major's relative minor is A-Minor, G-
Major's relative minor is E-minor, and so forth:
There is one snag to this method that solves itself as you work with the
Circle of 5ths. The naming convention for major keys will usually use a flat
accidental, such as Eb (to be read as E-flat), except for F# (F-sharp). Minor
keys largely use sharp accidentals to name the keys except for Bb. The
reason has to do with the count of semitones when constructing the
chords.

So for instance, D-flat major key may have Db as it's root, but the minor key
C-sharp major does as well. Because C# and Db are the exact same note,
just named differently. Once you become more familiar with the 12 major
keys and 12 minor keys you'll know which name to use (and thus which key
signature you're using).

TRANSPOSING SONGS ON THE FLY

If you know the melody of a song and just need to plink out the chords on
a piano or strum them on a guitar so your group of non-musician friends
can sing along, you can transpose a song quickly if needed, all in your
head. A common use for transposition is when a song is a bit out of range
for a vocalist.

All that you need to do is find the tonic of the key you want to use
(usually one or two steps above or below the current key) and you
can snag the chords right off of the circle.

This is just like with our chord progression example above. If you know the
song is a I - IV - V - I, then all you have to do is find your new key, and the
tonic is I, one step left is the IV, and one step right is the V.

Let's switch from a C-Major song with the I - IV - V - I progression to the

same in B-Major:
So by rotating the Circle you can immediately jump to another key!

You memorize this quickly after doing it a few times. But there's nothing
wrong with having the circle printed and folded up in your pocket either.

COUNTING THE SHARPS & FLATS IN EACH KEY

It's a crazy task to try to memorize which of these major or minor keys has
what number of flats or sharps and on which notes! The Circle of Fifths
helps us with this task.

Starting at C-Major (or 12 o'clock on the watch face of the circle), which is
natural with no accidentals, every step you move clockwise adds one sharp
to its key signature. In this example that means G-Major has one sharp, D-
Major has two sharps, A-Major has three sharps, and so on. This continues
for seven steps until you're back to no sharps.
Using the same method but moving counter-clockwise will add a flat for
each step. So starting with the natural C-Major, one step brings us to F-
Major with one flat. Another step takes us to B-flat Major with two flats. This
continues to seven until you're back to keys with no flats.

This works with the major keys on the outside of the Circle and their minor
keys in the inside of the circle, with the understanding that you always start
at "12 o'clock."

KNOWING WHERE TO PUT THESE ACCIDENTALS!

Although we've provided an easy to read chart at the bottom of the poster,
as seen below, you can memorize the pattern of how many sharps and flats
each key has and the order of their appearance on the staff.
The first clue is that the order of accidentals cycles around the Circle
clockwise for sharps or counter-clockwise for flats. They both follow this
pattern, which is easy to memorize thanks to the word "bead" being in
there:

BEADGCF

That is the exact order of the addition of flats. Run it backwards and you
have the order of sharps!

KEY SIGNATURE TRICK FOR ACCIDENTAL LABELING

That's useful if you've got time to count your way around the Circle, but
here's another shortcut to save you time. If you're transcribing or someone
asks you not only the number of accidentals but what they are for a
particular key, you can use this trick...

For sharps, all you have to do is take the tonic of the key and subtract a
semitone (a half-step). This leaves you with the last note in the key that has
a sharp. When we say last, we mean in the order of FCGDAEB. Here's an
example:

Sharps: For B-Major, we start with B and subtract a semitone, which

lands us on A#. Now we cycle through the Circle starting at F. This tells
us that B-Major has 5 sharps, which are F#, C#, G#, D#, and finally A#.
There's also a trick for flats! Take the tonic of the key and jump backwards
a fifth on the Circle by moving counter-clockwise one step. This again will
be the last note in the key that has a flat. For flats, we mean the last note in
the order of BEADGCF. Here's the example so this makes sense:

Flats: If we need to formulate the key signature for D-flat Major, we

start with Db. We move backwards a fifth to Gb. According to
BEADGCF, this key has five flats. Now we cycle around the Circle
counter-clockwise starting at B and add E, A, D, and finally G. These are
our five flats.

These kind of tricks are unbelievably helpful, and eventually you'll find that
you begin to memorize them and no longer need the shortcuts.

Interactive Circle of Fifth Chart

There have been a lot of attempts out there to make interactive charts in
the form of wheels that you can spin around to help you visualize the Circle
better for whatever key you're in. I've seen them for guitar and keyboard
that make no sense.

In the end, the tried and true is still and likely will always be The Chord
Wheel by Jim Fleser:
 The Chord Wheel - The Ultimate Tool for All Musicians

Called The Ultimate Tool for All Musicians, it expands even on our own
Circle of Fifths Chart above in two ways:

It's interactive with transparent overlays that spin to keep you on

target.

It has two more outer rings that give you further chord progression
options.

What you'll notice is that it's re-stacking the rest of the Circle above the I,
IV, and V in a way that keeps you from having to do mental gymnastics
rearranging it in your head. For less than the price of lunch, you can beat it.

What you get is the wheel on the front of a 12 page booklet that teaches
you how to use it beyond what's obvious just from looking at it. It's just a
short rehash of what we've talked about in this article. But this format is
nice because it keeps the wheel heavier and stiff as you use it and then
can be neatly stored with the rest of your music theory books when not in
use.

Conclusion
The best studio monitors and best studio headphones might bring you
audio clarity, but they won't help you know what keys and chords you're
hearing. But the Circle can... Whether you need a chord progression, to
transpose a song, help transcribing music, or remember which keys have
which accidentals, the Circle of Fifths is the catch-all tool to get the job
done.

It's worth having The Chord Wheel book around at home, our printable PDF
in your pocket, and finally having the Circle memorized and in your mind
and ready for action... and you've taken the first step by reading The Circle
of Fifths Explained! F

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Jared has surpassed his 20th year in the music
industry. He acts as owner, editor, lead author, and
web designer of LedgerNote, as well as co-author
on all articles. He has released 4 independent
 albums and merchandise to global sales. He has also mixed,
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about Jared & The LN Team here.

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