The Harmonious Blacksmith: A Music Theory Exploration

Ep. 10: Keys_and_The_Circle_Of_Fifths

• Kevin Patrick Fleming • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Podcast Episode: Keys and The Circle of Fifths

In this episode of our music theory podcast, we dive deep into the fascinating world of musical keys and the Circle of Fifths, two fundamental concepts every musician, composer, and music student must understand. Whether you're a beginner or an advanced player, mastering the Circle of Fifths is essential for enhancing your music theory knowledge, improving musical ear training, and navigating key signatures with ease.

We'll break down how the Circle of Fifths helps you visualize key relationships, and how it serves as a powerful tool for modulation, chord progressions, and composition. Learn how to use the circle to identify major and minor keys, understand the pattern of sharps and flats, and explore its impact on harmonic function and scale construction.

This episode is packed with practical insights for musicians, music students, and anyone interested in music history and music commentary. Whether you're working on jazz improvisation, classical theory, or songwriting, understanding the Circle of Fifths will unlock new possibilities in your musical journey. Tune in now for a deep dive into one of the most powerful tools in music theory!

Keywords: Music Theory, Circle of Fifths, Key Signatures, Musical Keys, Music History, Musicians, Music Students, Chord Progressions, Modulation, Ear Training, Scale Construction

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Holiday season to everyone out there. Welcome back to The Harmonious Blacksmith, a podcast on music theory exploration. I do appreciate you guys tuning in and listening in. I hope you're enjoying the series and learning a lot. This is episode 10, and I am your host, Kevin Patrick Fleming. Oh, wow. That's beautiful. You're too kind. You are way too kind. I do appreciate your love and support. Today's episode is all about keys. key relationships, and the circle of fifths. If this is your first time tuning in, I do want to let you know this is a cumulative podcast, meaning everything starts from a building block at the bottom and everything builds on everything else as we go. So if you're just discovering this for the first time, my recommendation is to go back to the beginning and catch up with us when you can. And of course, we do welcome you and we are happy that you are joining us on this music theory exploration. Quick recap of the previous episode, episode nine, which was an introduction to ear training and aural skills by way of learning interval sounds. We learned the 12 main intervals in ascending fashion, meaning we were going from a low note to a higher note, creating a unique sound between between each of those notes, which is what we call intervals. And basically, we created a list, and hopefully you've all done this by now, at least in your head, where you have a list of those interval sounds so that you can pull and relate, like from a filing cabinet, for example. The idea that, oh, the information's there in my filing cabinet in my brain. I just need to make the connection with other music that it's similar or the same. But today's topic is all about keys, which I have touched on in a previous episode, but we're just going to go a little more in depth and we're going to tie it into the circle of fifths. So let me start with expanding my previous definition of what is a key. A key is the group of melodies, harmonies, triads, chords, and chord that all work together to make a pleasant and logical sounding realm of music that is all derived from one scale pattern originally that produces a diatonic scale or a Greek mode, for example. Now, that may sound like an elaborate definition of what a key is, but when you really simplify, a key is really just seven pitches of a diatonic scale that are created by those original formulas. So of course, the two we know best are major and minor. And if you recall, major is Ionian in terms of Greek modes, and minor is Aeolian in terms of Greek modes. So think of a key as a nice, pleasant, and agreeable realm of sound where all the pitches work together to create a musical music narrative that is comfortable, pleasant, doesn't really have any curveballs, doesn't really do anything that sounds like it's extremely out of place or in another place or another realm. And basically everything I'm describing now, I'm talking about key changes and modulation, which I'm going to have an entire episode on key changes and modulation coming up. But for now, we're And for those of you that have listened to all of my episodes so far, think of this as a culmination point of everything you learned, right? skipping method and how chords and extended harmonies could be created from there. Think about this as the culmination of all of that. You take that scale, you take those harmonies, you take the triads, the chords and the chord progression, and all of them work together to create the magic that we know as music. So the real creativity in writing within a key, for example, is how can you manipulate the seven pitches of the diatonic scale to create something magical, beautiful, or just something that has an intention that you have in mind. But after all of that, a key is just seven notes, people. That's really all it is. So from a songwriter perspective, how creative can you be with those seven pitches, both horizontally and vertically, all of it together? How creative can you be within that one one space so now that i'm done waxing philosophically for a moment let's come back down to earth and let's start with one of our original keys again c major so let's go ahead and build it like we did in the beginning i'm going to go ahead and start on the root note c and then you know we go a whole step up which is a d whole step up to e half step to f whole step to g and whole step to A, whole step to B, finally a half step back to C. So again, we have C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. Again, seven pitches with the octave at the top, and that is literally the entire key of C major. If you didn't know that and you're having sort of a mind-blowing experience right now, I understand. In other words, it sounds like it's a lot more, like it's a lot more pitches and chords and harmonies and things that do this and that. Nope, it's just the seven pitches I just played and every key is built that way. And we're going to go through a few more as we go, but let's go ahead and progress to building our harmonies and our triads in the key of C major. So Remember, that works by skipping notes. Anybody out there remember how the Roman numerals are laid out in a major key? And I do mean any major key, because they are all built exactly the same way. Do you all remember? One is major. Two is minor. Three. Three is minor. Four is major. Five is major. Six is minor. Seven is diminished. And then we're back to one. of those chords I just played are available in the key of C major only because they are stacked vertically. They are notes that are stacked vertically originally. They are notes that are stacked vertically from the original C major scale using the skipping principle of triads that we learned in a The idea is that if I start on scale degree one C, skip two and take three, skip four and take five, I get C, E, and G. And when I stack those on top of each other, I get a C major chord, right? So all of them work that way. All of them pull from the seven original pitches of the diatonic major scale and just skipping, using the skipping method of triads to get all the chords. So again, it all just goes back to those seven notes. But when you put them together, you can get melodies and harmonies that yield really nice results. I'll give you an example of something like this. So that's, of course, Ode to Joy by Beethoven. And I'm kind of just playing it in C major as an example. And it just uses the first five scale degrees of C major. One, two, three, four, five in the melody. And it starts on scale degree three. And ends on scale degree one eventually for it to sit down and rest a little bit on the tonic scale. chord, and then the chords used to harmonize against it were, of course, a I chord, which is a C major, and then I went to a V chord, which is a G major. I also used a VI chord, which is an A minor, and I used an F chord, which is a major IV chord. So I'm using a 1-4-5 with a 6 in the key. And all of those chords contain just pitches from the original diatonic scale that we fleshed out originally. So now let me transition just a little bit so we can discuss a very important topic on sharps and flats. So what are sharps and flats and why do they happen? As you know, a sharp looks like a number sign or a hashtag symbol and a flat looks like a little lowercase B symbol for flat. A sharp indicates that a note is half step higher and a flat indicates that a note is a half step lower. So in your mind right now, what is it that causes sharps sharps or flats to happen within a key. Again, there's a reason that we start with C major, because C major has zero sharps and zero flats. That way we can just read off the letters of the music alphabet and the order that they come within the key of C major, which goes, of course, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. But let's go ahead and move to another key, and we're going to graduate towards how the circle of fifths works by the end of this. So I'm going to go ahead and move to another key, and we're going to do G major. Here is a friendly reminder before we build G major together. All diatonic scales have every letter of the music alphabet. They are all in order. We do not skip a letter, and we also do not repeat a letter. Those rules right there should tip you off as to why we get sharps and flats. But let's dive into G major. So let's start on root note G. A whole step from G is A. A whole step from A is B. Half step to C. Whole step to D. Whole step to E. Whole step to F sharp. Half step back to G. So a full G major scale would be spelled G, A, B, C, D, E, F sharp, G. Now, why does the F sharp come into play? It's because the formula for a diatonic major scale dictates that we require a sharp on the F note. In other words, if I just go straight through the pitches and I go G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G... it deviates from the formula that is required for the major scale, whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. All of a sudden you get whole, whole, half, whole, half, whole, whole. And then all of a sudden it's not the formula for a major scale. It's a different formula altogether. Remember, that original whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half, that is etched in the stones of time forever and ever. Well, you know, things evolve. But as far as our system goes, That's what we evolved to at this point. Who knows what we'll evolve to 100 years from now. But at the same time, that one stuck for a while. So all major scales are going to be built that way. Now, as we continue to go into our first key that contains a sharp, which is G major, I do need to explain one important concept, which is called the natural half steps. The natural half steps are between E and F and B and C take out your piano take out a keyboard image or look at a piano or picture one when you look at the piano and you see white keys and black keys every now and then there are two white keys right next to each other those are the natural half steps and they are B and C and E and F which means there's no sharp or flat between B and C there is no sharp or flat between E and F a quick way to remember remember that those are the pitches is big cat extra fat bcef i have a fat little calico that i love very much so that saying goes very far with me so for the purposes of study and simplification i'm basically going to stay in the realm of sharps from here on out in this episode and we will get to flats more and more later but what you need to know right now is now that you know bcef big cat extra fat are the natural half steps where there's no black key in between or no sharp or flat in between. What happens anytime you're in a scale formula where you're on a B note and you need a whole step up from B? Can you think of what might happen? You probably guessed it pretty quickly. Basically, instead of playing a C, a natural C, you're going to have a C sharp, which is a half step higher than a natural So if you need a whole step from B, it's going to be C sharp, not C natural. So in the case of the G major scale that we just built, we got to the letter E in the scale and we needed a whole step above that E, which is actually an F sharp, not an F. So going forward, you want to no longer think of sharps and flats just as, oh, I'm just raising or lowering a note when I need to. you want to think about it more as a mechanism that ensures that our scales sound the way we need them to sound therefore making the chords and the keys sound the way we need them to sound so they are a mechanism to make sure everything fits correctly and there is of course a long evolution on how sharps and flats came to be i don't feel the need to go over that right now um i I do encourage you looking it up, but it's basically just a long evolution of how things came to be. But now that we've discussed the basic concept of keys, now that we've discussed what the natural half steps are, B, C, E, and F, and why sharps and flats come about in order to fulfill the requirements of the formulas for the scales, it is now time to introduce what we call the circle. circle of fifths. The circle of fifths is a conceptual and organizational tool that is used to understand the number of sharps and flats that are contained in every key, to understand what letters specifically get the sharps and flats in those keys, to understand relative major and minor keys, which means they contain the same exact pitches, and to understand what keys are closely related related to each other for the purposes of modulation and key changing. And all of that can be calculated and organized using the magic interval of a perfect fifth, hence the name Circle of Fifths. I am definitely going to encourage you to Google an image of the Circle of Fifths, and you should save an image somewhere on your computer or your phone or whatever you use for that type of thing. I'm going to hold on the audio examples for a moment so that we can go over how powerful the circle of fifths is as a tool of organization for our minds so that we can understand keys. So here's how I'll start you off. The circle of fifths and all keys start with C major. Surprise, surprise as I was doing that one for a reason because it contains zero sharps and zero flats. So where does the interval of a perfect fifth come in, and how do we use it to understand keys? Well, I went over the key of G major not too long ago, and that was not by accident. That's because that is the very next key on the circle of fifths after C. Why? Because G contains one sharp, whereas C has zero, right? So we're Here's the kicker. From the letter C to the letter G is an interval of a perfect fifth. So once you have your circle in front of you as an image of some kind, you'll realize that when we go clockwise around the circle, we're going to start at 12 o'clock at the top, which is C. And as we start to go around 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, for example, as we start to go clockwise around, we're We are going to be going by an interval of a perfect fifth. And basically what it is, is every time you go up a perfect fifth, you add a sharp to the key. I'm going to say that one more time because it's really important. Every time you go up a perfect fifth from the previous key, you add one sharp to the next key. So C major starts with zero. We go up a perfect fifth to G. think about that c d e f g that's five letters right that's a perfect fifth so from c to g is a perfect fifth up we have one sharp now we keep going a perfect fifth up from g just go g a b c d would be the key of d major which will have two sharps a perfect fifth up from d will be a that has three sharps a perfect fifth up from a will be e that has four sharps and you can just keep Keep going around until you're at a full seven sharps, which is C sharp major. The second component of the circle of fifths that works in a really cool and brilliant way is called the order of sharps. So not only are the keys organized by the interval of a perfect fifth, but so are the order of sharps. Let me give you an example. First of all, C has zero, as we have reiterated over and over. The very first key in the circle of fifths that has a sharp is G major, which is a fifth above C, as previously explained. That sharp that is contained within G major is on the letter F So F is the first sharp. So can you think on your own right now of what the next key would be around the circle of fifths to the right? C is zero. G is one sharp. What's a fifth up from G? It's D. So D has two sharps. And every time you add a sharp, you can go a perfect fifth up from the previous sharp you added on the previous key and add that note to the sharps. That may sound a little confusing. Let me explain. So G major has one sharp. It's F. D major has two sharps they are f and c so notice f is still there but c is added which is exactly a perfect fifth above f So anytime you're organizing keys that contain sharps on the circle of fifths, F is always going to be the first one. So if you have one sharp, it is going to be F. If you have two sharps, it is going to be F first. And what is a fifth above F, which is C. So two sharps are going to be F and C. So if I keep going around the circle, we said C has zero, G has one, and it's F. D has two. They are F and C. Can you think of what the next key would be and what the added sharp would be? Let me give you a second. After the long pause, did you come up with it? So the next key on the circle of fifths above D would be A, right? Because A is a perfect fifth above D. And it's going to have three sharps instead of two, right? And the sharps are also going to contain that order of sharps. So remember, it starts on F. F will be the first sharp. A fifth above F is C. That's the second sharp. And a fifth above C is G. That's the third sharp. So now A major contains F sharp, C sharp, and G sharp. You may have to go back on the audio a few times just to let this all soak in, and that is perfectly okay. It is a lot of little math tricks to really get there. So now let me show you how this powerful tool can help you learn to spell out scales and keys using just the five fingers on your hand in order to count your intervals. So let me give you an example of what I mean. We know that C major has zero sharps because it's at the top of the circle, 12 o'clock, so to speak. So zero sharps, we can spell the whole scale starting on C going C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. Then to get the next key, we of course go up a perfect fifth from C, which is G. So now we are on G major, which is going to add one sharp. And the first sharp in the order of sharp is always F, as we've described before. So now I can spell a G major scale, just use all the natural letters except sharp F. So it would be G, A, B, C, D, E, F sharp, G. Now let's go one further. So if G has one sharp on the circle of fifths, what is going to be the next key up that has two sharps? Well, it's of course going to be a perfect fifth above G, which is D. So D major is going to add a sharp, and now instead of having one, it's going to have two sharps. But remember, the order of sharps always starts with F, but if we're going to add a second sharp, we need to go a fifth up from F, which is C. So now the key of D major is going to contain F sharp and C sharp. So spell all the rest of the letters D to D and sharp those two notes. D, E, F sharp, G, A, B, C sharp, D. And you have the key of D major. One more to help it sink in. Let's go one more around on the circle of fifths. So we did C was zero, G was one sharp, D was two sharp. And our next key, a fifth above D is A. And we're going to add a sharp again, which is going to be three sharps. So what's your first sharp always? F. So what's a fifth above F? C. What's a fifth above C? G. So now if you have a three-sharp key, it's going to contain F, C, and G-sharp. So now we spell the letters from A to A without skipping or repeating, and we add the three sharps we just named, F, C, and G, and it would be spelled as follows. A, B, C-sharp, D, E, F-sharp, G-sharp, A. And we have now established the key of A major. So now that you've established multiple keys using the principles in the circle of fifths and the basic math that goes with that, you can also understand the chords and chord progressions that are going to be predictable within these keys. I'm going to take the most recent example we went through, which was A major. If you recall, it had three sharps and they were F, C, and G. So the key is spelled A, B, C sharp, D, E, F sharp, G sharp, A. Now recall back to your Roman numerals in A major key. We know that one, four, and five are major, two, three, six are minor, and seven is diminished. So now you can name the entire key, not only the scale, but the chord qualities as well. So A major will have pitches A, B, C sharp, D, E, F sharp, G sharp, A, and the chords will be A major, B minor, C sharp minor, D, D major, E major, F sharp minor, G sharp diminished, and back to A major again. Okay, phew, I do realize that there was a lot of stuff to process in this episode about keys, and I wanted to talk more about key relationships, but my God, did I run this episode all the way up in time, and I like to keep pretty tight and regular on my time, so I'm going to save some time to do a part two of this of keys and key relationships so that I don't go on for too long. So let's go ahead and break things down. Today we started off with what comprises what a key is. We talked about how sharps and flats come about based on a need to adjust within a scale pattern to create keys correctly. We talked about natural half steps, E, F, B, and C with Big Cat Extra Fat. Then, of course, we talked about the circle of fifths and how we use the perfect fifth interval to calculate many relationships in keys. We talked about the order of sharps and how that falls under the relationship of a perfect fifth. And finally, we learned how to spell scales and triads to understand what's predictable within a key. I hope everybody has a good holiday vacation. I'm taking a few weeks off from the podcast to visit with family and friends and do some travel. I hope that you do too. And we will see you back in 2025. Because I can't wait to continue this music theory exploration with all of you.