Hi everyone. I’m a self-taught amateur pianist.
I’m trying to make sense of scales— beyond just memorizing them— and understand the patterns. I was under the impression that the circle of fifths would help understand scales and why they are what they are.
Eg:
*Why is a C scale absent of sharps, when the G scale isn’t?*
I’ve been trying to learn to read music and understand theory through a combination of watching YouTube videos and studying sheet music, but the ads on Youtube are totally intrusive, and I keep seeing explanations that seem to contradict each other because of my limited understanding of the background information. There is so much information out there and most of it seems to hinge on context that I don’t understand.
To learn and apply information, I generally need to watch people do something or look at thorough diagrams/charts; as well, I really benefit from actual conversations with other people in which they’re talking to me and I am able to ask them questions directly. I want to start taking lessons as soon as I can afford it so I can have one on one conversations with a trained teacher.
Edited for clarity!
Thanks so much♡
*Edited again: THANK YOU, really, I wish I could give all of you a million reddit awards. Seriously, so many of you have given me totally thorough answers that have still been easy to understand. I love it.*
In: 12
This is a bit long winded. Because of some of your responses I’ve seen, I’ll go over the relevant basics and history as concise as I can. The last two paragraphs relate directly to the circle of fifths.
It’s all about ratios of frequencies. Make anything vibrate at 440 hertz, i.e. 440 times per second, and you get the note called A. All multiples of two of a note — for example 220, 880, 3520 in the case of A — are the same note, you hear them as one tone.
Over a millennium ago western music used only seven notes. From one note to the same one octave higher or lower where eight notes, hence the name from Latin octo, eight. The six notes between were not spaced out equidistant but in a way they sounded good together (the tritone is the infamous exception).
Notes sound good together if their frequencies come out to a whole number ratio like 1:2, 2:3, 3:2, 5:3 etc. Or very close to it. For example the A minor scale has the frequencies 440, 493.88, 523.25, 587.33, 659.25, 698.46, 783.99, 880. A:B is only 0.002 off of a perfect 8:9 ratio.
With the limited arsenal of seven notes there was only the one scale and its modes. A mode means you use the same keys/notes but shift the starting point which shifts where the bigger/smaller jumps in the scale are. This changes the mood of the scale. Seven modes are playable with only the white keys on a modern piano.
Over time people noticed gaps between the original seven notes. The tritone mentioned above? Replace B with a note slightly lower and you get new nice ratios (F major scale). Hey, we could also leave the B as is and replace the F with a note slightly higher (G major).
As the mathematical theory got better it turned out those notes all fit into twelve “slots” from the first to last unique note on an octave. Twelve is a highly composite number, it has more divisors than any number before it. That means many nice ratios. A step from one slot to the next is called a semitone because you need two steps from most of the classic seven notes to the next.
Today, by convention, we still often use only seven notes but have twelve to choose from. A lot of language developed to scribe all the possibilities. You can say stuff like “D is the second degree of the C major scale”. Doesn’t say much more than you skip the C# slot.
A “fifth” is simply short for “fifth degree on whatever scale I’m talking about”. A perfect fifth has a 3:2 frequency ratio with the first degree. This happens when the two notes span exactly seven semitones. They sound very nice together.
The circle of fifths is a sequence of perfects fifths. It’s a circle because repeating seven steps twelve times means you end up with the same note. A bunch of other stuff mathematically related is also shown. It helps with composition, e.g. smooth transition between keys.
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