The Circle of Fifths is a powerful tool that helps musicians understand music theory concepts such as key signature and scale/chord relationships. It also opens up new creative possibilities that will ensure you’re never left short of creative direction in your compositions.
If you've been playing a musical instrument for a while, you've probably encountered the circle of fifths at some point.
It's a helpful tool for understanding music theory and gives easy access to important information when it comes to chords, scales, and their relationships.
Yet, despite the fact it can open up a world of possibilities and musical creativity, many musicians find it a dauntingly complex topic and don't take the time to fully understand how it works.
If this is you then look no further, you’re in the right place!
Today we’re going to teach you how to understand the circle of fifths and start applying its theory concepts to your playing.
How the Circle of Fifths Works
The circle of fifths is essentially a diagram that allows us to understand the relationship between different keys in music.
It shows you how many sharps or flats are in a given key and identifies its relative minor. It also provides creative insights, such as nearby related chords, to inspire unique chord progressions.
For a more in-depth look at how the circle of fifths is constructed, you can check out our Beginners Guide to Using the Circle of Fifths.
How to Use the Circle of Fifths
It's all well and good understanding how the circle of fifths is built, but how do you actually start using it to benefit you musically?
The good news is there are a ton of ways you can use the circle of fifths. Whether you're exploring music theory, songwriting, or transcribing music, you can start applying it right away.
Method 1: Exposing Songs
The circle of fifths enables you to expose the keys and chords used in your favorite songs with ease.
This is an amazing theory practice technique where you can peek behind the curtain and start to understand how your favorite songs work.
While this can be done with a regular circle of fifths, it's made even easier with the Noisy Clan’s Circle of Fifths Decoder because it intuitively masks out unnecessary information and shows only the relevant notes and chords for the song’s key.
Here’s how to do it:
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First, you need to find a couple of chords you recognize from the song. Or alternatively, you can figure out just the root notes of each chord and go from there.
Let’s use “Let It Be” by The Beatles as an example.
Say you can identify the chords C major, G major, and A minor, but the other chords are a bit tricky and you’re struggling to figure them out by ear. -
Next, you rotate the decoder until the chords that you can hear are shown in the windows.
In this case, you would keep rotating the wheel until C major, G major, and A minor are all visible on the decoder.
This puts us in C major, and the decoder will now show us all 7 chords that are available within the C major scale.
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Now the Decoder tells us all of the chords available within C major and you can start trying them out and see if any of them fit within the song.
In this example, the verse progression is:
C - G - Am - F
C - G - F - C
You’ll quickly be able to place that F chord that you struggled to find by ear. Now you know both the key of the song and all the chords!
Not only that, but the decoder also shows you the scale degree of each chord with a number by each window, so you'll also be able to see that this song uses the progression
1 - 5 - 6 - 4 (I - V - vi - IV).
Try this on as many songs as you can and you'll become a wizard at figuring out the key and chord progressions of all your favorite songs!
Want to try this right now? Head on over to the online Digital Decoder to put this into practice.
Your Songwriting Assistant
The circle of fifths isn't just about gaining insight into pre-existing songs.
It's also a very powerful songwriting tool and can provide you with tons of ideas when it comes to creating chord progressions or melodies for yourself.
To start, choose a number sequence, this will correspond with the numbers on the window (also known as scale degrees).
Next, pick a key you want to play the progression in.
As a quick example, let's say we want to play in G major and use the chord progression
1- 4 - 5 - 1 (I - IV - V - I)
Now just turn the wheel until you're on G major, look at the numbers by the windows, and play the chords in that order.
So in this case you'll be left with the chords G - C - D - G.
Sounds good, right? It has a strong resolution and would work great for a chorus.
If you need inspiration for some great-sounding chord progressions, flip your decoder over and spin the wheel. 12 super-effective chord progressions are available on the back to help you get going.
Modulation and Transposition
One of the most useful things about the circle of fifths is that it allows you to transpose music into a different key.
There's a myriad of reasons you might want to do this, maybe your singer's voice is tired, and they want to sing it in a lower key. Or perhaps your guitarist doesn't want to tune lower and it's more convenient to simply transpose the whole song.
Example:
You're playing a song in G major using the chords G - C - D - G, or 1- 4 - 5 - 1 (I - IV - V - I).
But you want to transpose the song down to C.
To get from G to C you move 1 step counterclockwise on the circle of fifths (which is a perfect fourth, or 5 semitones).
But what about the other 3 chords? Do the same thing! Move your C note one step counterclockwise to get F, move the D to get G, and move the G to get C.
Now you're left with the chords C - F - G - C, which is still a 1 - 4 - 5 - 1 progression, but it's now in C.
This process is made even easier if you have a Decoder: Transposition. As you turn the wheel 1 step counterclockwise, all the chords automatically move with it which saves you the trouble of moving each chord individually.
Learning Made Easy
These are just a few fun and creative ways to get you stuck into using the circle of fifths in real and practical musical scenarios.
As you can see, the circle of fifths isn't as difficult or confusing as it once was at your initial first glance.
Musicians of any age or skill level can get good value out of applying some of the exercises covered in this article to their own musical endeavors. Happy playing!
