Category: news

(Part 2) May the 4th be with you, The Circle of Fourths

on Part 1, we already had C, F, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db as the major key. Circle of fourths diagram, the last note will be F# or Gb. here I prefer using Gb, since our topic is circle of fourths which is related with flat-notes. Yes, the Circle Of fourths is about Flat-notes.here is the notes:

Gb – Abm – Bbm – Cb/B – Db – Ebm – Fm7b5 – Gb

at the picture, you see Cb is red, while Cb is B note. so why bother?

  • first: it is to avoid the two same note written on one line. you can see there is B flat(Bb), and if i wrote Cb as B, there will be two same notes (Bb and B).
  • second. it is a useful chord writing in understanding scales and modes. it is in the different section of learning. we keep notes like Cb and B#, E# and Fb stay written as is, in order to understand the note degrees and analyze the intervals.
  • third is, well, that’s all i know for this. i will add this sections as soon as i find out more about this.

 

Circle of Fourths and Fifths twitter.com/theguitarlearn…
— The Guitar Learner (@theguitarlearn) May 10, 2013

i put the diagram in various places so anybody can access them, while i may need more to add in this section, so responses and critics are my most welcome.

i had promised there are three circles in this topic and the next one will be the GooglePlus circles. I made this blog with a huge vision of learning and sharing, and i try to make decent connections between all the guitar learnerd around the world. so i made this blog :

the continuation of this post would be The Circle of fifths, but I’m still thinking about it, since it has the same ideas in learning the circle of fourth and i have to present it in different approaching method. but for now, all i can say about the circle of fifths is, following the red guy on the diagram will get you the circle of fifths notes. the one with sharp-notes, counter clock-wise direction, using the fifth notes as the point.

respond please.it is highly appreciated. thanks

May the 4th be with you, The Circle of Fourths (Part 1)

Yeaaaa… I know, this is very late and nobody cares about the trending topic “May the 4th be with you” stuff right now . But what I’m going to share here, is something about “The Fourth(s)” that we all will carry it forever. for you who just found out, this is the thing you will remember from now on.On my post Take A Walk Around On Scales and Modes Chart, i brought a circle.  And now I brought three circles here. some people who read this would probably think, what circles? why does it have to be a circle?.. well, circles are essentials for our lives. you will amazed by the number of circle’s kind in life.first circle, related to the post title, is The Circle of Fourths. This circle is used to analyze the characteristic of music notes and chords by their intervals. this circle will explain how many flat-notes they have in major scale. why we should know about these? IT IS VERY USEFUL for us to think faster in finding notes, at least that’s the way i use them for now, and by knowing this, there will be more probabilities in finding something to improve our music learning and understanding, also our guitar playing.

as i had learned, the key of C major (based on the Ionian scale) consist no sharps or flat notes. the chords are:

C – Dm – Em – F  – G –  Am – Bm7b5 – C
I___II___III__IV__V__VI____VII____I__ 

and down here is the The Circle of Fourths Chart i made. i customized it so i can define and remember them.

what i can read from this chart is, from the apex, the key of C, then when you follow the blue guy on chart (clockwise), you will get the circle of fourths. the next note(THE FOURTH note, *that’s why it is called Circle of FOURTHS)  after C major is F major. F major as root(1st) has 1 flat note in its chord sequence.

F – Gm – Am – Bb – C – Dm – Em7b5 – F
I___II___III___IV__V__VI____VII___I__

the circle of fourths
F major key (1 flat-note: Bb)

in the key of F major as root, there is one flat note, the one i colored  with red, the Bb, … i’d like to put more images here to define all these since I’m not good at all in modifying text on blog post.

the next fourth note is Bb and when it comes to 1st or root, the Bb key in major has 2 flat notes:

the circle of fourths
Bb Major Key (2 flat notes: Bb – Eb

next:

the circle of fourths
Eb Major Key (3 flat-notes: Eb – Ab – Bb)
the circle of fourths
Ab Major Key (4 flat-notes: Ab – Bb – Db – Eb)
the circle of fourths
Db Major Key (5 flat-notes: Db – Eb – Gb – Ab – Bb)

so this far i have defined C, F, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db as the major key with the number of flat-notes inside them. the latest one is F#/Gb as the major key, which i save it for the next part of this post with more explanations in it. for God’s sake, for just one circle, this post is way too long…. hahaha