I finally found a little spare time and as a result, the first version of my interactive circle of fifths is ready for you to play with. I'm working on a second version, which will include tidier graphics and sound. But for now, you will get the general idea and hopefully start to find it useful. And here it is:

The Guitar Master's Interactive Circle of Fifths

I just had to post this on my website for all of you to read! Through a friend of mine who works at a highly regarded golf club nearby, I received a message of best wishes from a guitar legend for my wedding, coming up in July. The legend in question also said he would try and visit my website to cast a critical eye over some of my writing and to see what the site is all about.

So if you're reading this, Scott Gorham of Thin Lizzy, welcome to my website, The Guitar Master!

Take your time, look around and see if anything interests you. I'm dying for expert opinion on all of this so please feel free to sign up and leave comments or drop me an email via the contacts page.

Thanks for dropping by!

The Guitar Master

Diminished chords are made up of four notes and are a "mysterious" sounding result of the major scale in chords. The diminished chord is the 7th step of the major scale, so for instance:

C major scale: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C
Chords in the key of Cmajor: C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bdim, C

That diminished b chord is made up of the notes B, D, G# and F. It can be shifted up or down by three frets, and you will have the same notes but in a different order, i.e. with a different note as the root, but all of the same notes in total. Going through this process, sliding up or down three frets continuously produces an eerie kind of sound as in a scooby-doo cartoon.

You will find that you can move up four times and then you will be back to the first shape you played, but one octave up. This is because you are moving up by 3 frets, and there are twelve chromatic tones in an octave. (12/3 =4).

Furthermore, that diminished shape can take on any one of 4 names (typically but not necessarily you would name it after the lowest note). So a diminished b could also be called a G# diminished, a D diminished or an F diminished.

This implies that the same chord can be used in four different major keys, and therefore 4 different minor keys. Remember that:

1.) every major scale has a relative minor scale that uses (nearly) all the same notes
2.) every major chord has a relative minor chord that uses (nearly) all the same notes
3.) every major key has a relative minor key that uses all the same chords

So, does this diminished chord somehow tie together it's "keys-in-common"? Why don't you find out? Try switching between chords that you would normally not play together, because they are in different keys. So switch between an E and a C#. You get a kind of an "enlightening" feel or one of revelation. Useful for setting the mood or perhaps switching between keys perhaps?

Have fun and see what kind of effects you can get. Ideas to play with might include switching in an alternating fashion between a diminished chord and any of it's parent major and minor keys.

This article has been updated with the information below:



Drawing a cross in your circle of fifths will connect up four notes. These four notes constitute a diminished chord. This diminished chord is part of four major and minor keys. The keys that this chord is a part of are found by simply rotating your cross one place clockwise. Likewise, if you want to know how to form the diminished chord for a key, simply draw a cross with one arm pointing to that key, rotate one place anti-clockwise and the cross will point to the correct four notes.

Furthermore, the phrygian mode for a key is at a right angle to the diminished chord for that key. This implies that there is some relationship between relative major and minor scales or keys and the phrygian scale and diminished chords. It seems to be that a diminished scale in a particular key shares all the same notes as a phrygian scale. Likewise, it would seem to be that somehow the second degree of a major scale in chords (so for instance Dminor in the key of C major) has some relationship to the C myxolydian scale, as they too are at right angles to one another.

This is gong to be clarified and expanded upon over time. But feel free to experiment with these relationships for yourself and see what you can find.

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Phrygian mode appears to be a little bit special. Apart from being a very mysterious and far-eastern sounding scale, it has a strange property when compared to it's parent major key.

Lets begin by taking a look at the modes for the key of C. If we assume that each mode is merely a major scale pinched from another key, and then play the major chord for the corresponding major scale, we get a really nice sounding chord progression, which is instantly Spanish in it's appeal:

(Forwads:) C, C#, D#, F, G, G#, A#, C
(Backwards:) C, A#, G# G, F, D#. C#, C.



Before you try to figure out what scale this might be, I can tell you that it is simply a G# major scale (or an F minor, as they are relative). And if you look again at the circle, you will see that a G# major scale is the phrygian mode in the key of C. So, Phrygian mode is a kind of "anti" major scale, easily found by playing the major scale at 8 'o' clock in relation to the key in question, or by mirroring the mode names for your key as in the previous article on the circle of fifths and modes.

So the scale of G# contains all of the root notes from the different modes for the key of C. And if you switch between C and G# major chords, you get a nice enlightening sound, similar to that when you switch between keys that share the same diminished chord.

Speaking of which, do you want to know which keys share the same diminished chord? Well that's easy. Just draw a cross shape in your circle. That will point to four different notes. Those are the keys that share a particular diminished chord, which can be named after any of the four chords you are pointing to!

And how do you find out what the notes are that diminished chord? Simply rotate your cross one place anti-clockwise. Likewise, you can draw a cross in your circle to identify the notes of a diminished chord and then rotate one place clockwise to identify the four keys that use that diminished chord. See the page on diminished chords for more info.

Wow!

I wonder if there will ever be an end to these little peculiarities.

This is the Circle of Fifths. The note at the top is the key that we will be concentrating on. Labeled are the major minor and diminished chords used in that key. So the chords in the key of C major are: C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bdim, C.

Remember that relative major and minor scales have the same notes. Likewise, relative major and minor keys have the same chords. So these chords can be used in the key of C major or A minor. (The relative minor chord or key for any major key will be at 3'o' clock, if the major key in question is at 12.) Notice how the circle of fifths neatly arranges our major, minor and diminished chords from the major scale in chords and places them all together.

Another point to note is that the circle of fifths arranges keys so that the closer they are, the more chords those keys have in common. So C major and G major share almost all the same chords, with the exception of F and F# (Db).

There will be a flash or java app on this site in the near future to allow the circle of fifths to be used interactively.

Keep your eyes peeled.

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This is the circle of fifths. The note at the very top is the key that you will generally be focusing on. in music, C is a good starting place because it has no sharps or flats, i.e. all the white notes on the piano keyboard. The dividing line indicates all of the notes in a C major scale. Everything to the right, including the notes that are touched by the line, are in a c major scale. To work your way through the scale, you would you would start from C and then play every other note, jumping across the circle when you hit the dividing line. Scales will always go in alphabetical order. the important information gained from using the circle of fifths is which notes need to be flattened or sharpened in a particular key.

There are various truths about the circle of fifths. You can easily find out relative major and minor pairs. If you draw a line from the top of the circle (C) to 3 'o' clock (A), you will have determined that C major is relative to A minor, likewise drawing a line from 12 'o' clock (C) to 9 'o' clock (Eb / D#) you will have worked out that C minor is relative to Eb major or D# minor. remember that a minor scale will always use the same notes as it's relative major. So for an A minor scale, you would play all the notes from a C major scale, but starting and finishing on A. See the article on the circle of fifths and modes.

For more interesting facts on the circle of fifths, see the reference material for this article: Studying the Circle of Fifths

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I plan on writing a few bits and pieces on modes, so there will be more to come.

But this is a real nugget:

Using the Circle of Fifths for finding Modes in a Key

You should have seen by now just how useful the circle of fifths can be in music theory. Here is a concept that I'm not aware of having seen anywhere else, so if you have seen it elsewhere, please let me know so I can credit someone other than myself.

The image below is of the famous circle of fifths, but I have added in the names of the various modes. The modes are written down next to a particular chord. These are the chords of C major. (See my previous article on the major scale in chords, or my references to the circe of fifths if this concept is new to you).



The point of this exercise is to illustrate that if you want to play an F Lydian modal scale, you simply play a C major scale but use the F as the root of your scale. Play it over a song in the key of F and you get a particular feeling from the scale. Likewise, if you want to play an A Aeolian scale, you simply play a C major scale again, but with the A as your root note. Playing this scale will give you a different feeling altogether to the F lydian. But you are still using exactly the same notes.

So how can I work out what a C lydian, or a C Aeolian scale is? Or even a C Locrian? Well, you simply flip the mode names over so that they are a mirror image of where they were previously. This is illustrated below:



So to play a C phrygian modal scale, you just need to play an Ab (G#) major scale over the key of C, or using C as the root of your scale (remember that on the guitar, you can play the same shapes for any scale and change the key that you are in by simply adjusting your starting position, or root note).

And if you look read the previous article and reference material on the circle of fifths, you will find that you can apply this rule to any key or scale by simply rotating the position of the modes according. Seriously, if this does not make sense, take a look at the great reference material for the circle of fifths in the previous article. All will hopefully become clear.

This will still take most people a long time to commit to memory. But I think the process is made much easier if you understand the concepts and patterns behind it all.

This is just scraping the surface. More on modes and the circle of fifths to come.

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The Circle of Fifths can be used for many different tasks in music. To change the key you are focusing on, simply rotate the letters until the key you are interested in is at the top. There will soon be a graphical app that will allow you to do this interactively on this site. But until then, you will need to use your imagination or a bit of paper. If you are using the circle for a specific task like figuring out the modes or chords in a key (see links at the bottom of this article) then be sure to rotate the letters alone, but not the other labels, i.e. the mode names or chord flavours (major, minor or diminished)

The circle of fifths is an ingenious method of organising the different keys into an arrangement that makes them easier to remember.

Check out this incredibly interesting web page on the circle of fifths and some of the useful patterns you can find.

The homepage of the same site gives you a great introduction into the physics of music and the vibration of strings. This is where music, maths and science are really related. You can begin to understand why certain things sound "musical". But as to what stirs emotion and makes music interesting, this takes the artistic flair of a songwriter or genius of a true composer.

The theory of music, including the circle of fifths applies to all musical instruments and musicians that are interested in understanding it, not least of all guitarists. "Hey Joe" by Hendrix was based around the first 5 chords of the circle of fifths. He started in C, but you can start anywhere and you will have simply transposed the song.

The composer Chopin also based many of his progressions around the circle of fifths, and he is widely regarded as one of the greatest.

More articles on the Circle of Fifths:

Using the Circle of Fifths for finding notes in a scale
Using the Circle of Fifths for finding chords in a key
Using the Circle of Fifths for finding modes in a key

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I'm playing with setting up a new gallery section for this site. You can see the initial results here:

Test Gallery 1
Test Gallery 2

To get the full experience, try installing PicLens from Cooliris. There is a nice easy plugin for firefox, but it does support all the major browsers with a simple install. This will give you a truly fantastic 3D gallery experience. Google images have adopted piclens, which makes searching through google image results a very rewarding experience indeed!

Enjoy.