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Many of my guitar students often ask me "what is the circle of fifths." I took me a while to figure out how I could explain my understanding of it and also make the circle useful to their musical studies. Apologies to music theory purists who might read this; I tend to simplify or outright lie for sake of easier understanding. Hear we go (musical pun intended).

What is the Circle of Fifths

If you do not have a copy of one in front of you, stop and go get one. Any search engine should lead you to one in a matter of seconds. I'll wait. There is a method to the circle's madness. First, if you traverse it clockwise from top to bottom you progress thru all the sharp keys, in order of increasing number of sharps. If you start at the top and go counter clockwise, you go thru all the flat keys, adding a flat at each position.

Sharp keys, clockwise from top to bottom:

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

Flat keys, counterclockwise from top to bottom:

C => F => Bb => Eb => Ab => Db => Gb

The astute student will notice that C is in the topmost position, and it contains no sharps or flats. The even more astute will recognize that F# and Gb are enharmonic equivalents; they sound the same but spelled completely different.

Unfortunately for many people that is about as much use as they can find for the circle of fifths. So I found a simple fews ways my beginning students could use it in their studies. Here is what I came up with:

The Two Most Important Chords

In any key there are two chords that are the most important chords in that key. Here is an example. In the key of C the most important chords are C and G. You can make a whole song with just those two chords. There are probably many songs like that! In the C major scale, G is the 5th note in the scale: C D E F G A B. So a G chord is often called the five chord in the key of C, and usually denoted with the Roman numeral V. The C chord is then the one chord in the key of C, often noted with the Roman numeral I.

How Chords Resolve

Music is about tension and release. This is often created harmonically by having chords that create tension resolve to chords that provide a point of release or relaxation. The simplest, and most powerful of these resolutions is the movement from V to I in any key. In C that resolution is G to C. Lets skip the details of why this works, but trust me its been done for hundreds of years and our ears of grown accustom to the sound and we like it.

Around the Circle

Find C and G on your circle of fifths. They live next door to each other. To go from C to G you have to move clockwise around the circle. So here is your first use for the circle: if you what to find the V chord for any key, like Bb for example, find that note on the circle and move clockwise to the next neighbor and you have found the V chord, which in this case is F.

Chords For The Blues

The blues is a popular musical form, and one of my personal favorites. Many blues progressions just use three chords. Guess what, two of them are the I and V chords in the key. For example, in the key of C the blues contains the chords C and G and one more, F. F is the IV chord in the key of C (because F is the 4th note in the C major scale). Look at how they lay on the circle: C is sandwiched between F and G. Hey there is another use for the circle: to find the chords you need to play a blues find the key on the circle of fifths and the IV and V will be on either side of it. The I IV and V chords go together so nice that many songs, in many styles of music, are composed with just those three chords.

Playing A Song In Another Key

Lets say you have a song you like but do not know how to play. Then lets say you managed to find the sheet music for the song in the key of Bb. However, your favorite artist recorded the song in the key of G and you way to play along with their recording. Here is how the circle can help. Its pretty obvious that all the Bb chords should become G's since we are transposing the song from Bb to G. But what about an Eb chord in the sheet music? How does that translate into the key of G? Here is the trick: the Eb is one position clockwise from Bb. What is one position clockwise from G? You should find C. There you go: all Eb's chords in the sheet music should be transposed to C if you want to play in the key of G. Here is one more: in the key of Bb the chord is Gm. How does that Gm transpose to the key of G? G is three positions clockwise from Bb. If you start at G and go three positions clockwise you end up at E. But wait, we forgot the minor. The original chord was Gm so you must use Em in the key of G.

Original music in Bb: Bb Eb Gm
Transposed to G: G C Em

I hope this has given you a few ideas about how to use the circle of fifths. Maybe you can figure out some more neat tricks?