The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #137393   Message #3145820
Posted By: josepp
01-May-11 - 11:35 AM
Thread Name: Easy way to draw a circle of 5ths
Subject: RE: Easy way to draw a circle of 5ths
////Major Scale

Tone, Tone, Semi-Tone, Joining Tone, Tone, Tone, Semi-Tone.////

You can't draw the 7-pointed star from it. That's significant because the circle unites music and geometry.

Here's the beauty of it:
We obtain the C major scale my way in the following order:

C E G B D F A

Notice that it actually forms a chord. CEG is C major. Add the B next and you get a Cmaj7. Add the D and that's a Cmaj9. But you can start at the E and adding the G and B and EGB is the E major. Add the B and EGBD is the E minor 7. Start at G and GBD is the G major and so on. And this works for all the various diatonic scales on the Circle.

What's also noteworthy is that the sequence contains how notes are laid out on manuscript paper. FACE represents the spaces between the lines on the treble staff and EGBDF represents the staff lines. Needless to say, it also describes the layout of the bass staff: ACEG GBDFA respectively.

but what's even cooler is that no matter what scale on the Circle you plot out with my method, the order of the notes follows that layout if we ignore the accidentals for the moment. For example, I mentioned the Ab flat scale:

Ab C Eb G Bb Db F

Ignore the accidentals and there it is again ACE GBDF

Pick another scale--say F:

F A C E