Building Scales with the Circle of Fifths

Lesson 4: Building Scales! So now that we've looked at the Circle of Fifths, I'm sure you're like "So what the heck is it for?" Well, in this lesson we're going to begin to see the power of the COF in all it's glory. We're going to learn to build scales. Quite simply, the COF's sole purpose is to organize the chromatic scale by a logical order, more specifically, by order of tonal gravity. This means that the closer a note is to another note in the circle, the more naturally the note tends to lead into the other. In other words, moving by the COF, naturally creates flowing sound. C naturally goes to G and G naturally goes to C or G also can go to D and D goes to G or A but not C necessarily. I think you get the point.

To get scales such as the major scale, we simply take seven notes in a row from the COF. Say we started on C, then to build a scale off of C, we just take seven notes : C, G, D, A, E, B and F#  Then we order those seven pitches into chronological order based on the Chromatic scale:  C D E F# G A B C   This isn't a major scale btw, it's a lydian scale if you're wondering but we'll get into that much later. Let's do it with F now!  F, C, G, D, A, E, B  organized into:  F G A B C D E F.   Now let's do something harder like Eb!    Eb, Bb, F, C, G, D, A E organized into: Eb F G A Bb C D Eb! As long as you know the COF, you can find any of the notes in any scale.





Now these scales are called Diatonic which isn't very important to use now but what I'm saying is that these are a specific kind of scales, you can't make, say a A melodic minor or Hirajoshi scale with the COF in this way.

Building the Major Scale

Up until this point, we've only been interested in an ambiguous scale of notes but now we're going to learn how to create a major scale from any note. All we have to do to make it a major scale is start the sequence on the second note so if we have seven fifths from F:  F C G D A E B then we would make C the bottom note.  C G D A E B C then we would have C D E F G A B C which is the C major scale. Another way to look at this is to take a note like G and to make a G major scale, then we would go down a fifth from G and make seven fifths from that note, which would be C in this instance.

G major scale = C G D A E B F# which becomes G A B C D E F# G  

Db Major Scale = Down a fifth from Db is Gb or F# which is

     Gb Db Ab Eb Bb F C which then becomes Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb C Db 

Basically you're just ordering the scale where the 2nd note in the sequence becomes the bottom pitch rather than the first note. As we'll learn later, this is where modes come from, it's just picking different notes in the sequence to be the base of the scale. Although we'll get into Minor scales later, in case you're curious, the minor scale can be made by starting the sequence on the fifth note.  

So if we have seven fifths from G:  G, D, A, E, B, F#, C# then we would order it 

B C# D E F# G A B  Easy enough?  We'll learn all about minor scales a little later. 

ASSIGNMENT: 

              Practice constructing major scales and rows of seven fifths from all notes in the musical alphabet

              Keep working on learning the COF 

Good luck! When you're finished here, move onto Whole steps and Half steps.