The Circle of Fifths: A Beginner's Guide to Identifying Intervals
- Aria Guitar Lessons
- Feb 4, 2023
- 2 min read
As a beginner guitarist, understanding the Circle of Fifths is an important step in your musical journey. This concept is widely used in music theory and can help you identify intervals, understand key signatures, and enhance your overall musicianship.
The Circle of Fifths is arranged in a clockwise manner and each step represents a perfect fifth interval. Intervals are the building blocks of harmony and by knowing them, you can better understand the structure of music and develop your ear for music
If you start from C at 12o clock and go to G that's a 5th, if you continue going clockwise - G to D, D to A etc it's a 5th. The same applies if we start from lower case 'a' under C and go clockwise it's 5ths.
If you remember my earlier blog post speaking about 1-3-5-7. You can easily see that as well in the picture below I have markerd the interval. Here we are assuming root i.e. 1 is C.
Using the circle of fifths you can know the 3rd and 5th making major chords. So I the pic below CEG 1-3-5 is a C chord and adding the B which is the 7
The lowercase 'm' signifies a minor chord. Am is the relative minor to C and inner most circle where we see B the ° signifies it's a diminished chord but in this post we are looking at them as notes and not chords.
In conclusion, the Circle of Fifths is an essential tool for beginner guitarists to have in their musical toolkit. It can help you identify intervals, understand key signatures, and enhance your overall musicianship. Start using it today and see how it can improve your musical abilities.
Click the link below to watch a video to see more on how the circle of fifths can help
You can also download the circle of fifths tool on the play store.
Commentaires