(jazzy piano and drum music)
- Hey everyone, and welcome back to
Music Theory for the Dropouts.
My name's Cassi Falk and today
we are going to tackle the Circle of Fifths.
Just looking at the Circle of Fifths can be intimidating,
but let's go through the patterns to simplify this
and make it much easier to understand.
Let's begin with thinking of the circle like a clock.
At the 12 o'clock position, we have C Major.
If you remember from previous videos,
the Key of C has no sharps and flats.
It's just all white keys from C to C.
Now because this is called a Circle of Fifths,
we're going to move up a perfect fifth to our next key.
The next key is going to be G.
So from C we go one, two, three, four, five.
That's how we get to G.
Now when we move up to the one o'clock position,
we are going to add a sharp.
If you remember from the previous videos,
we just talked about the G scale.
The G scale had the one sharp; the F sharp.
(G Major piano scale)
Now going up from G, if we count up another fifth,
one, two, three, four, five,
we get to D, and D is in the two o'clock position
on the circle, and, as you guessed it, we've moved up to the
two o'clock position, we're going to add another sharp.
It's got two sharps.
So the key of D, or the key signature,
is going to have an F sharp and a C sharp.
(D Major piano scale)
If we continue this pattern
going around the circle clockwise, we always add a sharp
each time we get to a new key.
So now let's try going counterclockwise from C.
So we have our C scale at the top
and now we are going to go down a perfect fifth.
One, two, three, four, five,
which we reach F.
If you remember again from the previous videos,
F scale had a flat in it: it had a B flat.
(F Major piano scale)
So the key signature of F is B flat.
Now remember, when we count up or down a perfect fifth,
we have to remember that the distance
between the notes is seven semitones.
So let's count that this time when we go from F
down a perfect fifth to the next key.
So we are gonna count the seven semitones.
One, two, three, four,
five, six, seven,
in which we reach a B flat.
The B flat scale, or the key of B flat,
again, adds a flat to the key signature.
So we're going to have our B flat and the next one, E flat.
(Bb Major piano scale)
Now, if you've noticed, each time we add a sharp
or each time we add a flat,
we always add it in a certain pattern.
For the key of G, we had an F sharp,
and then when we added another sharp for the key of D,
we added a C sharp, but we also kept the F sharp.
This is called the Order of Sharps.
We always use the same order for all of the keys.
The order of the sharps is
F,
C,
G,
D,
A,
E,
B.
And we use an acronym or a saying to help us remember.
Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle.
Again, you can come up with your own.
The order of flats is similar to the sharps.
From the F scale, we found that we had a B flat
as our starting flat, and when we went down a fifth
to the next scale point, we had to add another flat,
which was E flat.
The order of flats is B, E, A,
D,
G,
C,
F.
Or, just the opposite order of the sharps.
The list of all the major keys are
on the outside of the circle.
And remember the relationship between major and minor.
The minor keys are just beneath them in the inner circle.
And remember, they share the same key signature.
So following this simple pattern
and memorizing a few different sayings
can help us learn and memorize
every single key signature on the piano.
So go ahead, try figuring out a few of those
other scales and we'll see you soon.
(jazzy piano and drum music)