The Circle of Fifths Explained

The circle of fifths is quite complicated to some people. Well, for those of you who don't know what the circle of fifth is, it's basically a way of writing down the notes in a scale which tells you the sharpened notes of a scale.

Here's how the circle of fifth works:

Let's write down the C scale.

C D E F G A B C

Now, we take the fifth note, in this case, G, and write it down starting from G:

G A B C D E F G

Now, we sharpen the last note before G, which is F in this case. Therefore, we get:

G A B C D E F# G

And that's your G scale.

Now, we take the fifth note from G and write down the scale with the sharps from that note.

D E F# G A B C D

Notice how I've sharpened the F, because it was previously sharpened. Now we will sharpen the last note from D, which is C, so we get:

D E F# G A B C# D

Following this routine, we keep going till all the notes are sharpened. Our final result will be something like this:

                                            Scales:

C   D   E   F   G   A   B   C                 C

G   A   B   C   D   E   F#  G                 G

D   E   F#  G   A   B   C#  D                 D

A   B   C#  D   E   F#  G#  A                 A

E   F#  G#  A   B   C#  D#  E                 E

B   C#  D#  E   F#  G#  A#  B                 B

F#  G#  A#  B   C#  D#  E#  F#                F#

C#  D#  E#  F#  G#  A#  B#  C#                C#

Finally, we notice that in C# all the notes are sharpened, and that's where your circle of fifths ends. These are all the notes of each of these scales.

Thank you for taking out your time to read my post! I hope it helped you learn something today. Stay rocking!

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