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How to use the circle of fifths

“Music is a powerful tool in galvanizing people around an issue. There’s no better way to get your point across than to put it in a beautiful song”, Ed Sheeran once said about making music.

Maybe you have your own story to tell people, or you like being creative with music and want to compose your own – whatever your motivation, this article could help you take the first steps towards writing your own song. Composing music is a very complex topic that is difficult to explain and requires a lot of musical experience. This little “beginner’s guide” is only meant to show you a very basic way to compose a pop song if you do not have any previous experience in composing. However, it is a good idea to get familiar with some basic music theory first – on this website you can find some articles on chords and cadences, for example, which will help you to understand the explanations below. So grab your guitar, ukulele, piano or any instrument of your choice and let’s get started!

To create a song, there are basically four things you need to consider that will give your song a structure. Later you can play with them, vary them and be creative, but it helps to think about each of them first and define a clear framework and stick to it, which will also make it easier for your listeners to discover patterns and a clear structure in your song. Think of them as different dimensions of listening: The lyrics tell your message in words, the rhythm gives your song a structuring pattern, the melody expresses your story using different tones and paraverbal communication, and the harmony creates an emotional basic mood or atmosphere. It is the harmony that this article will focus on.

If you play only one tone at a time, you create a melody. With three tones, you have chords, which create harmony. As you probably already know, you can take some major or minor chords and string them together – for example, following the sequence of a cadence to get a nice result. Instead of counting and slowly working out which chords go with each scale, there is a quick and easy way to do this. It’s the circle of fifths that helps you. The circle of fifths is, as the name suggests, a circle: along it, the different keys are shown in a particular order. At the top, at twelve o’clock, there is a capital C, which represents the key of C major. To the right is the letter G, which stands for the key of G major. Moving clockwise, next to the G is a D – and so on, until the 12th letter, F. But how do you get this order, and what exactly do the keys mean?

How does it work?

The circle of fifths – Luisa Mehrgardt

The twelve letters represent all 12 tones, including the semitones – so all the keys are covered. You get the order by going up a perfect fifth ( which is seven semitones) from one note, for example C. So on a piano keyboard, you would go from C as the starting key and first note to the fifth note (in this case the fifth white key on the keyboard) – which would be G! From G you go up another fifth to D, and so on, until you end up back at C: that’s why the circle of fifths got its name! But it can be a bit tricky to work out what the next keys are when you’ve reached F# at the bottom of the circle – it’s easy to mess up the counting. There is a simple way to find the right keys: Just go back to C at the top and then go down a perfect fifth ( you’ll reach F) and write it down to the left of C – keep going counterclockwise until you get back to the six o’clock mark. If you continue counting fifths up and down as far as you can, you may be confused by the fact that there are sometimes two different keys in the same place, for example B and Cb. They are basically the same, but one has sharps (#) and one has flats (b). Usually, and you will see this in many pictures of the circle, you note the keys with flats only on the left side of the circle and the keys with sharps on the righthand half. Another useful aspect of this key sequence is that you can see how many sharps or flats a key uses. Key C has neither sharps nor flats, G has one sharp, D has two sharps, and so on. And vice versa: F has one flat, Bb has two flats… I think you got the idea.

Now we know a lot about the big circle – but what about the inner circle? You won’t find it on every picture of the circle of fifths, because you can work it out for yourself using a little trick. The inner circle tells you the relative minor of the key. A relative minor is a key that uses the same number of sharps or flats, but is not major, but minor, with the scale starting on a different note. So if you have your special key – let’s say C – and you go three spaces clockwise (from C to G, from G to D, from D to A), you get a character – in this case A – and simply write “minor” next to it ( which means that we have found out that A minor is the relative minor of C). Then write it below your original key in the inner circle.

How can you use it?

That was a lot of theory – now let’s get down to practice! 

Scale in C major – Luisa Mehrgardt
Chords you can use in your song – Luisa Mehrgardt

Many pop artists use deceptive cadences in their songs – such as OneRepublic in their song “Counting Stars”. As you may already know, this cadence follows the form I (the tonic or first note of a scale) – IV (the subdominant or fourth note) – V (the dominant or fifth note) – VI (the sixth note). To accompany your song, you can then play the chords based on these notes. But instead of counting, you can now easily use the circle of fifths for whichever key you want your song to be in. First, find your key on the outer circle: that’s your I. Then go one step counterclockwise – that’s your IV. Next, move one step clockwise from your root key – that’s V. Finally, add the relative minor of your key, below I in the inner circle – that’s VI. For C major, you would use the one on the left (F), the one on the right (G), and A minor in the inner circle, resulting in the deceptive cadence of C – F – G – a. This is also the one used in “Counting Stars”! 

That is a pretty easy cadence and always sounds nice. But since a lot of songs use it, you could also try to experiment with it a bit. The second and third note chords (II and III) also sound interesting when added to your song. You can find them in the inner circle as relative minor of IV (II) and V (III). To create a lot of emotional tension and make a very unique and interesting song, you can also use different types and qualities of chords, such as diminished chords. The Swedish pop band ABBA’s songs are an example of the use of many interesting chords.

As you can see, the circle of fifths is a very useful tool for songwriting. Just take it, choose your key and start creating your own music!

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