Circle of Fifths, Circle of Life

Anyone who is learning music, or has tried learning it at least, might have come across a term known as “circle of fifths”. Well, if you’re one of those casual campfire guitarist,s who googles chords for a song you want to learn, just so you could impress few hot chicks in college, you might not have come across it, but now you do.

Okay, so before we dive straight into “Circle of Fifths”, let us understand intervals first.

“But Sushovan, we were talking about circles, now intervals?”

Well, think of it like this.

Intervals are like numbers and circle is, well, its a geometrical figure. I mean, in terms of mathematical education, as kids, we first learned how to count, then did arithmetics, and then learned geometry. I’ll follow the same path.

So, what are intervals?

Intervals simply means a distance between two notes. Or a difference in pitch between two sounds.

Most of us, or some of us, might have had music classes as kids, where we had to spend hours just singling Sa Re Ga Ma Pa or Do Re Mi So La, those are actually intervals. The note “Sa” is the C note, and “Re” is the D note, and the difference in pitch between “Sa” and “Re” is called an interval.

And then we have a term called “half step” and “full step”. A half and a half makes full, right?

“But Sushovan, what is a “step”?”

Okay, lets look at the keys of a piano.

The distance between a white key and a black key is called a “half step”. A distance between a white key and a white key is called a “full step”. There’s exceptions of course: as you can see, there’s no space between notes E and F, and B and C. So are they a full step? Nope, they’re a half step.

Oh and yes, the # means “sharp” and b means “flat”. If you go ahead a note by a half-step, it “sharpens”, and you add a # after the note, and if you go back a note by a half step, it “flattens”, so you add a b after the note. Two #’s makes a full step ahead, and two b’s makes a full step back.

A half step ahead of C is C#, and a half step ahead of C# is D. Or, you can say, C## is D. Similarly, a half step back of D is Db, which is the same note as C#, and Dbb is C, which is two half steps back, or a full step back.

With an exception, of course. Notes E and B don’t have a sharp, and notes F and C dont have a flat.

“Okay, that’s a lot of information, now can we learn about Circle of Fifths?”

Matte kudasai.

The “fifth” in “circle of fifths” is a name of an interval in a major scale.

Basically, if you take C as a starting note, and you write down the major scale, it becomes C-D-E-F-A-G-B.

And here’s how it fits.

The interval from C to D is a major second, from C to E is a major third, from C to F is a perfect fourth, from C to G is a perfect fifth, from C to A is a major sixth, from C to B is a major seventh. After B comes C, and the interval from C to C is called an octave. An octave is basically the same note but higher or lower in pitch. Full circle.

And, if you flatten one of those major second, major third, major sixth and major seventh, then in those words, you just replace “major” with “minor”. In other words, the interval from C to C#/Db is a minor second, from C to D#/Eb is minor third, and so on.

Flatten the fifth interval, you get a diminished fifth or tritone, and sharpen the fifth interval, you get an augmented fifth. C to Gb/F# is a diminished fifth, and C to G#/Ab is an augmented fifth.

“Okay now, why are we learning music theory in middle of a Zerone article?”

I’m glad you asked.

If you just write down all the fifths notes and make a circle out of it, you get what you call a Circle of Fifths.

Well, I’ll leave the counting to you guys, but here’s how it is. Refer to major scale if you’re confused.

Start with C. The perfect fifth of C is G. Now take G. Perfect fifth of G is D. Now take D. The perfect fifth of D is A. And go on until you come back to C. Bingo, you’ve come full circle again.

“Okay, now why is there A beneath C and why is it written Am?”

Am means A minor. So basically, by basically I mean at the basic level, there are two chords: major and minor. Major chords sound “happy”, minor chords sound “sad”.

Okay, before that, I need to explain what goes in a major scale.

Let us take C major scale for example. In C major scale, we get the following notes: C-D-E-F-G-A-B. If we take those notes and construct chords out of it, we get the following chords: C-Dm-Em-F-G-Am-Bdim. (dim means “diminished”, more on that someday)

The interval between C and A is of major sixth, and A forms the minor chord in the C major scale interval. A minor is termed as relative minor of C major.

“Can you tell us what you’re meant to tell us, can we skip music theory for the time being?”

Okay, okay. I guess we aren’t that patient after all. But again, that is too much information I gave you guys in a short period of time, so much so that you guys might have left bewildered. I understand. Music theory is a science in itself, and it is something that takes quite a while to understand and master.

First of all, let me teach you, in simple terms, how you write a simple piece of music.

Let us take G major scale first. G major scale has following notes: G-A-B-C-D-E-F#. Write down the chords in G major scale, we get G-Am-Bm-C-D-Em-F#dim.

The thing about composing music is that the song needs to be in a “key”. A key is basically a group of notes, constructed based on the major or minor scale of a chosen note. The chosen note is termed as “root note” or “tonic” of that key or scale.

So, if I write songs based on the G major scale, I’m writing the song in the key of G. And in the key of G, the G major chord is the tonic of the key, because its the note around which will have constructed the song around.

The thing about composing music is, when you pick a key of a song, you cannot play whatever chords you want to play. The song simply doesn’t sound good, it becomes noise instead. And, when you pick a key of a song, the rule of thumb is, always start with the tonic chord, or end with it, or both.

In simpler terms, stick with your roots.

So basically, whatever chords you play in between, you always start with your root chord or tonic, and end with it. Full circle enough?

I mean, we, as a person, do have our roots. We begin somewhere, and where we begin, we learn the culture, norms, beliefs, and we grow up. But we don’t just stay at our homes, or wherever we live in. Just playing one chord, the tonic chord, in a song doesn’t make the song interesting at all, and for this very reason we add other chords. When you move from the tonic chord to the next chord, and then move to another chord, you’re basically travelling from one note to the next, and this movement of chords is what tells the story. The same way, we travel around, we explore places, we learn more, and this is what tells the story of our lives. Just like how chords and notes tell a story.

Wherever we go, wherever we are, inside, it is us, our identity, our beliefs, the culture we learned, that defines us. Just like how a tonic chord of a key, a root note of a scale, defines the song, whether you start with the tonic chord or end the verse or chorus in the tonic.

Sometimes, just using the chords from a single scale gets boring. This is when we burrow notes from another scale into the song, to spice things up. The thing about music theory is that, when you burrow notes from another scale, and insert it in middle of a song, it doesn’t sound that great. It sounds dissonant, sounds like its off the place.

Now, let us introduce the F major chord, it doesn’t feel right, because in the G major scale, we have F# note, not F. When you’re composing a song and you add F major in middle of the song, it doesn’t sound like its in place. Again, if you look at the circle of fifths, you’ll notice that F and C are related to each other, and C is a note in G major scale. Now, if you play F before or after C, then it feels like the chord fits into the place.

The analogy of life is that, many times, you need to get out of your comfort zone, and open yourself up to experiences you never had, or are hesitant to experience. Just like how F major chord in the G major scale doesn’t belong, and adds dissonance when used in middle of the song, when you step out of your comfort zone, you don’t feel like you belong there, you feel like it’s something you aren’t used to. But again, just like how F and C major chords are related to each other, and C major is a chord in G major scale, you just manage to work around it and resolve it.

But that doesn’t mean you keep on adding other notes which doesn’t belong in a scale or a key. That just makes it even more chaotic, more noisy. We just need to know what kind of events we need to experience that will have positive impact on us.

Often times, musicians spice things up by adding 7th chords, diminished chords, or augmented chords. What this does it that it adds a feeling of tension in the song, which resolves when you play another chord suitable chord after it. For example, taking G major scale again, if we play D7 chord (pronounced D dominant 7th), it adds a sense of tension to the music, and we often resolve this tension by playing the G major chord, and it gives a sense of fulfillment or relief.

That’s how life is. We can’t just have good experiences all the time, we need some tension in our song to spice things up, and when it resolves, we finally get a sense of relief. You need to balance good experiences with bad ones, and bad experiences need to be resolved with good ones. Bad experiences will make us suffer, indeed, but they spice up our lives, so we can live good experiences and enjoy them more.

Well, that’s it I guess.

Oh wait, I forgot something.

Another important thing in music is rhythm.

You can compose a music, for sure, but you need to make a really good rhythm, because without it, music won’t feel like its going in a flow. I remember someone telling methat music is like water, once it flows well, it goes well. And rhythm is an important part of music. And to play songs, it should be in perfect rhythm. If the notes goes off the rhythm, the song won’t sound good at all.

It is another analogy of life too. You need to be in rhythm, in flow, else things won’t feel so good. Play too slow, you’re lagging behind the rhythm, play too fast, you’re going off beat. Be to close minded, be hesitant, things don’t go well. Be too haughty and feel like you’re in control all the time, you’ll go off beat.

Playing in rhythm used to be my weak spot when I started to learn music, but with practice, and with patience, I learned to play it in flow. But just learnign to play it in flow isn’t it all, you also need to be adept at learning to know when the flow begins and ends. I ended up having a realization; that life is about learning to be in flow, but also learning to know when and where the flow starts and ends.

And most important of all: stick with your roots, but be open and add more experiences to spice up your life.