The Circle of 5ths
Lesson 17 from: Music Theory for Electronic ProducersTomas George
The Circle of 5ths
Lesson 17 from: Music Theory for Electronic ProducersTomas George
Lesson Info
17. The Circle of 5ths
Lessons
Introduction
00:58 2Basic Music Theory Terms
08:07 3Keyboard Layout and Octaves
06:19 4Working out Major Scales
08:58 5Perfect 5ths
06:42 63rds - Part 1
08:05 73rds - Part 2
07:39 8Perfect 4ths
04:36Chords and Inversions - Part 1
10:05 10Chords and Inversions - Part 2
09:13 11Chord Progressions - Part 1
10:22 12Chord Progressions - Part 2
08:26 13Inversions
08:53 147th Chords
09:48 15Chord Extensions
08:09 16Suspended Chords
02:40 17The Circle of 5ths
04:30 18Minor Scales
08:09 19Chords in the Natural Minor scale
09:56 20Harmonic and Melodic Minor
09:30 21Write the Chords, then the Melody
09:03 22Write the Melody, then the Chords
18:01 23Arpeggios
08:00 24Writing Bass Parts
11:35 25Writing Bass Riffs and Adapting Melodies
14:10 26Song Analysis - Chords, Part 1
10:17 27Song Analysis - Chords, Part 2
05:58 28Song Analysis - Melody
08:55 29Song Analysis - Arrangement
07:30 30Song 2 Analysis - Arrangement
05:04 31Song 2 Analysis - Chords
08:55 32Song 2 Analysis - Melodies
06:34 33Song 3 Analysis - Chords
11:41 34Song 3 Analysis - Melodies and Arrangement
06:55 35Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 1
10:22 36Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 2
18:47 37Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 3
18:49 38Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 4
08:21 39Create a Song from a Chord Progression - Part 1
08:16 40Create a Song from a Chord Progression - Part 2
08:07 41Create a Song from a Melody - Part 1
07:27 42Create a Song from a Melody - Part 2
09:05 43Modes Intro
04:10 44Ionian
00:43 45Dorian
04:31 46Phrygian
02:09 47Lydian
01:35 48Mixolydian
02:13 49Aeolian
00:39 50Locrian
01:50 51Dorian Mode Example
09:12 52Pentatonic Scales
12:27Lesson Info
The Circle of 5ths
Hello. In this lecture, we're going to be looking at the circle of fifths. So the circle of fifths is basically a diagram that shows us a few different things about relative minors, relative majors and modulation modulation is where we can change our key into a different key. And the circle of fifth just allows us to quickly see the closest keys. So say, for example, we are in C major and we have the notes CD efgab and back to C all the white notes, then we have the cores that go with this. So we have major minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished major. So we have C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor and B diminished. And we don't actually want any of those calls. They don't quite sound right. They're not the ones we want. We can actually do something called modulate. So this is where we can basically move from one key to another. So if we're in C, we can move over to the right and we could use G or we can move to the left and use F over here. The reason these wor...
k is because G has one different note to C instead of F, this has an F sharp. If you're used to reading classical music or any kind of score, you might know these signatures here. This basically just means one sharp, which is an F, if we go left, we actually are adding a flat. So F uses a B flat instead of A B, you can work these out by using tone tone semitone, tone tone tone semitone like we did previously. But basically F has a B flat or one flat and C doesn't, so it's just one note difference. So that's this is what these scores or these clefts are. They're just telling you it has more flats or more sharps. And that's basically it. We've got two here because C flat is actually the same as B and G flat is the same as F sharp, just different way they're written. Don't really worry about that. If you say C# or D flat doesn't really matter. Either one is fine, they still sound the same. So we can move to the left or right and any of these. So say we're in a song and we're in a major, we could easily move to D major. Then we can use all the chords from D major also, or we could move to a major and use the chords from a major or even back to E major. So if you're using one key, you can quickly go in between these different keys and go along the fifths. If you want to be really experimental, you can go round and round and use loads of crazy chords. But to start with, I just recommend using one key and then modulating or moving to a different key. So you could go to G, go back to C and then go to F. So this wheel just quickly allows us to look and see which keys are kind of next to each other and have the closest number of notes. So if we go to the right, this goes round in fifths, which is why it's called the circle of fifths. So if we go clockwise, C to G is 1/5 CD. EFG and G to D is 1/5 D to A is 1/5 et cetera going round. And if we go anti clockwise or left C to F CD, ef is four notes, F to B flat, if we're in the key of F, so you count from the key you're in because F has a B flat, not a B natural, you can tell it's gotta be flat just because of this note above. And this basically means yeah, up 1/4. So if we go left, it's fourth, we go right. It's 1/5. It's called the circle of fifths. Cos traditionally, we go around clockwise. But if you want to go around the other way, you can use it sometimes called circle of force but regularly, it's called circle of FS. It also shows us the relative minor. So C major has a relative minor or a natural minor. And this is a minor. The way we work this out, we just go up six notes. So CD efg A six notes that goes to a minor. So G up six notes E minor, D up six notes B minor, et cetera. Remember to stick in the key when you count up because in a there's an F sharp. So instead of an F, so if we count up six from a ABC sharp def sharp, we know instantly that it's an F sharp minor because A has free sharps. It doesn't really matter if you don't know what the names are. You just know there's free sharps. And of course, you can work this all out by using tone, tone semitone, tone, tone tone semitone to work out the notes in the major scale. And then we can look at the circle of fifths and then we can see it's relative minor. It works the other way as well. So if we're in a minor, we just count up three notes ABC, we can find our re relative major, which is ac let's quickly look up here. So we know that E minus relative major is G major. So this is kind of what the circle of fifths does. Just allows us to quickly find some new chords or new notes that modulate or move into a different key cos a lot of the time you might be right in some core progressions and you don't just wanna use the ones in the one key, you wanna use some different ones, but you're not 100% sure which ones you can use. This is why if you just have a copy of the circle of fifths, just go and Google images and just take a screenshot or print it off and put it somewhere, maybe not hang it on your wall. It's not the coolest thing in the world is quite old fashioned and it, it was used at schools quite a lot. So I wouldn't really hang it up in a recording studio, but it's good to just reference now and again. So you quickly know how to modulate and change the different keys. The other thing it does, it shows us actually the furthest away notes. So if we go on C and we go all the way straight down, we find the furthest away notes, which is a G flat and the same with the A, all the way down. It's the E flat. So this is a tritone. Other words, it's called uh an augmented fourth. So a slightly bigger fourth or a diminished fifth, a slightly smaller fifth or a tritone. These are the worst notes you can use of each other if you want to make really horrible spooky kind of horror music, maybe you can use these but generally I would avoid augmented fourth, diminished fifths or trones, whatever you call it. So C to F sharp or G flat is, yeah, not a very nice interval. We just, let's just write on here. So we have, see here then we have the F sharp. Let's just write this on. This will probably sound like horror music. If you notice when I played that as A B the third one actually sounded OK. That sounds fine. It's just one semitone away from a perfect fifth. So a perfect fifth sounds perfect most of the time. It's just slightly off and yeah, it's really uncomfortable. The only thing that's more uncomfortable than this is perhaps then putting a semi to apart. That's pretty bad as well. I'd avoid the semitone clash like that. But the tritone, yeah, it's not a very pleasant interval. So maybe avoid that. And the circle of fifths just allows you to quickly see. So we're playing in the key of F oh I wouldn't use B because this will clash. So if we're in f, then you put the note of B um you know, instantly. Yeah, it's probably not gonna work. Like I said, if you want to create some more unusual music or maybe some kind of jazz Trones can work or horror music, film music, but generally for any kind of EDM dance music, pop music, I would avoid using these Trones. So this is the circle of fifths, it just really allows us to quickly see which keys we can modulate or move into. So we can just go around and then we can write some music that allows us to try to explore new keys rather than just sticking in the same key all the time. You can quickly see you can go left or right and it's only one note away. And then we can also see the relative minor. And the other way, if we're in a minor key, we can quickly see the relative major. So, thank you for watching this lecture. I hope you found it useful and I'll see you in the next one.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Student Work
Related Classes
Electronic Music Production