circle of 5ths

[iconic]

I always wondered why the circle of 5ths is mentioned so many times in tuition books without ever saying why it's so important...?

I have just found this explanation, and invite comments as to if it's a good, sound and fair one? It seems circle of 5ths can help to guess chords/structures and could help me when I trying to play by ear?

[b]" There is one last piece of information about chord patterns that every bass player ought to know. It summarizes all the information about how chords move from one to the next in a simple way. It's called the Circle of Fifths, and it's created by writing out the 12 notes in this order: each note is followed by the 5th note of its major scale. Thus, if we start with C, we follow it with G (the 5th note of the C major scale). We follow the G with D, which is the 5th note of the G major scale, and D is followed by A, and so on around the octave until we get to F, which is followed by C, and we're back to where we started. There are two basic rules for chord changes. The first is that short movements along the circle sound more natural than long ones. For example, the chord change C major to G major is very natural, whereas the change C major to E minor is more awkward. The second rule is that clockwise moves (forward) make the song seem to be developing forwards, whereas counter-clockwise moves (backward) make the song be resolving. The chord changes we gave above are these:




E A E B E (I Saw Her Standing There). This one involves only single
step movements. Starting on E, we go back, forwards, forwards, back.

G D C G (Fortunate Son). This one starts by going forward one step, then
jumps back two steps, then resolves by going forward one step.

D Bm Em A7 (Today). This one begins with a three-step jump forward, but
then resolves back one step at a time.

F Dm Bb C7 (Lollipop) This one begins with a three-step jump forward, th
en comes _four_ steps back, then two steps forward and resolves with a gentl
e single step back.

Almost all chord movements in all songs involves jumps of 4 steps or less along the Circle, and most of them only 1 or 2 steps. The Circle of Fifths is an invaluable guide to picking up bass lines off a record. The general steps you can follow are these:

1. Listen to the first note and the last chord of the song. This root note of this chord will almost invariably be key of the song. Thus, if the first chord is A major, then the song is very probably in the key of A major.

2. Listen to the song and try to figure out the sequence of chord changes. If you can hear each chord, great: but if you need to guess, guess short steps on the Circle of Fifths before you guess longer ones. eg, if the song opens on A major, it's very likely that the next chord is either D major or E major, and it's very unlikely to be F minor or D flat major.

3. Once you know the sequence of chords of the song, then start trying to find the individual notes of the bass line from the chords that are being played, and from the likely passing notes between those chords."[/b][i][/i]

Edited April 25, 2011 by iconic

[neilb]

I wouldn't have called the change from C to Em awkward!! Its a natural interval being a major third above.

It seems technically correct but wonder if it really assists, if it does, great.

[Wylie]

I also think this could help, but after asking about the cycle on this forum a while back, I got some answers that made me dig further. I discovered something interesting but perhaps tangential to the message from the OP; which is this:

As I played through a couple of songs that depend strongly on the movement of the cycle -- one of them being Autumn Leaves -- it struck me that ii - V - I (which in Autumn Leaves is (for me) Amin, D7, and Gmaj7) establishes, for a space, a distinctive key. Well, I am sure lots of folks will roll their eyes at something so obvious, but it hadn't occurred to me to look at it in quite that way, and when I did, it helped me focus to a much greater degree on the choice of notes found within that cluster of chords in the key of G.

As I said, this does not directly answer the OP, but it helped me look at the cycle in a completely new way and helped me find chords, and alternative forms, much more easily & without going all over the fretboard looking for them. More importantly, it showed me something practical about the cycle that I can use with nearly any song.

tg

Edited April 27, 2011 by tedgilley