Circle of Fifths – Perfectly Explained (video)
The Circle of Fifths is used by musicians to represent the relationships between all 12 tones of the chromatic scale. It is to music what the colour wheel is to artists.
In sixth century B.C., Greek philosopher Pythagoras was the first to standardize or dissect musical tuning into 12 equal tones, inventing the circle that we eventually built upon. In the 1670’s, Russian composer and music theorist Nikolay Diletsky wrote a book, Grammatika as a guide to composition and included the wheel. The wheel continued to be improved upon and added to until we have something of the modern wheel below.
Most students know that you can use the Circle of Fifths to figure out what key you are in and can also use it to figure out how to find the relative minor keys. But if you take it a step further, as this video shows, you can also use the Circle of Fifths to figure out what chords are available in each key, how to transpose your music to a new key, and how to change keys within a song (modulate).
I’ve seen this video pop up a number of times in different video feeds that I subscribe to. The video is by Mark Newman, and teaches some of the many uses of the Circle of Fifths.
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Mark Newman Youtube channel : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqc030Z2EAyi_NEkxNiTWIg
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If you find yourself fascinated by the Circle of Fifths and all the possible patterns, here is a link to Jeff Jensen’s Math and Physics page where he has devoted a whole section on exploring different patterns using the Circle of Fifths.
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