Circle Of Fifths In Music

This is a Circle of Fifths widget. This is a visual and audible way to explore relationship between keys within music. You can tap or click on it to interact. Alternatively, try using your computer keyboard. It play the sound for each relationship as you interact.

At the heart of this widget is wheel which contains all twelve key (major and minor). On the outside ring are major keys. In the inside ring are the corresponding relative minor keys. Click on any section to choose the key, it will highlight in a different color from the other options. Then the middle circle change to display the name of the selected key.

How to Use This Tool

Another option is to simply use your keyboard. To move left and right on wheel at one-second intervals, just hit the Tab button. Once a key is highlighted, hitting either Space or Enter will activate that key. If you don’t want to touch your mouse (or even to cycle through keys rapidly while practicing), then this might work better for you.

Below the wheel is a row of chord buttons. These represent the seven diatonic chords in whatever key you choose. They are marked with their names but also with their Roman numeral function in the scale. If you touch one of the buttons, it play a sound sample of that triad. So you can try out the harmonic building blocks of the key without having to bring extra instruments into play.

Above the wheel, you’ll see a fullscreen button and a little toggle button that says “help”. Tapping the fullscreen button will expand it to take up your entire screen. This is great if you want to project on a bigger display or simply have more space for it to be seen from mobile devices. The help button opens a short user’s guide explaining what turning the wheel clockwise/counter clockwise does in terms of flats & sharps.

At the top right is its control area which include a volume slider that adjusts the overall output level for all audio elements by dragging it left and right. This is handy if the default volume is too loud when you’re trying to work somewhere quiet, or if you want to share your screen with someone else who may find sound distracting.

One of the most useful aspects for a learner in this piece of software is the dynamic key signature display below the wheel. This displays number of flats or sharps required for current key selection and also changes as you change keys. Alongside this text description, there is also a visual representation which support what you are seeing and looks like more familiar staff notated music.

To hear how similar most of the notes are in keys next to your starting point, you could travel around the circle one step at a time. Try jumping from say the I chord to the IV or V chord, and listen for what that does to the chord progression. Many songs from many different genres has this as their backbone relationship and understanding it helps make sense of why some progressions seem to naturaly sit together.

Try swapping between major and minor sections of the wheel too. Each pair of keys shares exactly the same key signature but they create entirely contrasting feelings. You can hear this contrast realy well when you play through the chords in each mode together. This is a great exercise for modal interchange that would of not require you to stop what you’re doing.

Work through it slowly and find out what is in each section, at a pace that suits you. It’s not like an exam where you have to learn it all overnight. Each of these elements has been created for exploration, not rigid study. Get going with something easy first and add on the listening bit by bit.