Guitar Theory Lesson - The Circle Of Fifths

Guitar theory has its place in any style of music. Once you have a few songs under your belt, you can improvise a little using the minor pentatonic scale and you know what I IV V means, you can begin to grow as a guitar player. But not indefinitely. Expanding your guitar technique is one way to grow, another is by learning some guitar theory.

An important element of guitar music theory is the circle of fifths. The way it works is if you start a scale from the fifth note of another scale, then start a new scale from the fifth note of the previous scale, and keep going like that, you will end up with the scale you started with. There are no sharps or flats in the C major scale. All the other keys contain some sharps or flats. Here is a formula that might help you learn some of the characteristics of the major scales: if you start a scale from the fifth note of any other major scale, your new scale has one more sharp than the first scale. So, if you begin with the C major scale, your next scale will be the G major, the next D major and so on.

So, if you start a scale from the fifth note of the C. major scale, you will end up with the G Major scale which is G A B C D E F#. If you build another scale from the fifth note of the G major scale, you'll get the D major scale which has two sharps. This is the idea behind the circle of fifths. Now you can tell what key a piece of written music is in by looking at the number of sharps or flats at the start of the music.

Until you actually start writing songs the circle of fifths is more of a tool for the understanding music rather than something you can put into practice. The circle of fifths is used a lot in chord progressions and the more you explore chord progressions the more you'll see how the circle of fifths works.

With the circle of fifths you can organize all twelve possible major scales into a key signature. The "key" is the note that starts the scale, otherwise known as the root. The term "key signature" is a reference to how many sharps or flats are in each key. You can easily organize scales by the key signature because no two major scales have the same amount of sharps or flats.

By Expert Author: Ricky Sharples