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Education • Art • Music
194 | Circle of FIFTHS and THIRDS
The ultimate ChordMap for songwriting
February 28, 2023
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Most people don't understand the Circle of Fifths or the Circle of Thirds ... which is crazy because both patterns are fundamental to songwriting. And what's more, these two patterns are intricately connected. And once you see how they work, you have superpowers as a songwriter.

As this video explains, the Circles of Fifths and Thirds each provide important insights into chords.

  • The Circle of FIFTHS is more like a 10,000-foot view of all keys and modes -- helping you navigate parallel modes, using borrowed chords, and exploring modal mixture.
  • The Circle of THIRDS highlights the connections between chords in a specific key and mode -- and also shows how to build extended chords.

Together, these patterns provide amazing insights into harmony.

Below are several key images from this video, for you to soak in at your own pace....

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354a | Creep (video)

An explanation and PDF is in the following post (354b).

00:01:14
350 | Extended chords explained

Extended chords are easy to understand -- once you know about the Circle of Thirds.

Essentially, fancy extended chords are built by adding notes incrementally from a key's Circle of Thirds. By including ever more intervals of a third, you can play increasingly more complex harmonies.

Had I only known this in the beginning!

Without the Circle of Thirds, exotic chord names seem mysterious and complicated. WITH the Circle of Thirds, however, everything clicks into place.

🎥 This short video gives you the gist.

For more details on the construction of these chords, check out Lesson 17 in the course: https://mikegeorge.locals.com/post/6051473/296-lesson-17-pdf-video

And the PDF referenced is ChordBook 2 here: https://shop.mycolormusic.com/products/colormusic%E2%84%A2%EF%B8%8F-guitar-chordbook-modebook-bundle

00:00:57
345a | Theory Course LIVE - heads up

Hey! Join Sunday's stream for the first in the Theory Course LIVE series.

We'll be going through the course lessons page-by-page, playing the exercises, etc. -- with questions, answers, and sidebars along the way. It's a new and insightful look into music theory.

(The live stream link referenced in this video is actually in the NEXT post.)

00:00:58
384 | Db Parallel Modes - Theory, Piano, Guitar

Check out this snapshot of the Db parallel modes in three formats:
-- in a table, showing how these patterns compare in a "theoretical" form
-- on the piano, to play them directly on the keyboard, and
-- on the guitar, to see (and hear) each as they rise up the fretboard

Lesson 18 in the course explains each of these patterns in detail: https://mikegeorge.locals.com/post/6157872/297-lesson-18-pdf-video

Once you know how to play these modes on one instrument, you can easily pick them out on any other instrument. For example, try playing these patterns on the keyboard and then the fretboard (or vice versa). Either way, it's the same set of patterns.

And as you become familiar with these patterns, you can experiment with their sounds to create songs that sound awesome.

8_-_Db_parallel_TPG.pdf
363 | Daily Dose

Here's a snapshot of the C Mixolydian mode -- in both pitch space (circular format) and on the guitar fretboard -- which you can play in any octave.

Mixolydian's b7 note gives the pattern a distinctively cool sound, as you can hear when you play it.

The QUESTION is, what is the source scale of this particular mode?

(Hint: Mixolydian starts on the fifth scale degree of its underlying source pattern.)

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361 | Color notation (technical knowledge)

Hey, all -- question for you:
Do you have any thoughts on ways to colorize notation?

Folks regularly ask about software to use. And because we have engineers of various types in our community here, I'm hoping some of us may have ideas, or technical know-how.

I think creating an open source tool for community members is an excellent project! It will be very powerful for dissecting and composing songs. With a tool like this, our collective knowledge will rise exponentially.

See this post for context -- and please tag us if you're interested:
https://mikegeorge.locals.com/post/6059027/hey-all-mikegeorge-ive-been-really-loving-your-lessons-ive-worked-my-way-through-12-of-them?cid=8082688

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376 | The Rosetta Stone of Music

Music is a language. A language that your ears naturally understand, but that’s also utterly foreign to your eyes … as a mess of confusing dots and lines and squiggles.

It’s frustrating, to say the least. Because it means that you’re already fluent in this language (or at least you can easily hear it), but at the same time you’re not able to speak it (by easily playing and creating it yourself).

And as long as you’re confused by the visual language of music, you’ll struggle with the syntax of song, unable to fully articulate the music that you can hear inside.

So what’s needed is a way to align your hearing with your sight. That is, you need a method to illustrate the patterns of music in such a way that they LOOK as natural and simple as they SOUND.

In other words, you need a “Rosetta Stone” to help bridge the gap between the musical language of your ears and that of your eyes.

And with color, you have the answer — using the special connection between the circle of fifths and the color wheel, along with the natural link between the circle of fifths and the chromatic scale.

By leveraging your familiarity with color to decipher the otherwise cryptic sequence notes, you can finally crack the code of music. This is our musical Rosetta Stone.

 

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371 | Music vocabulary: letters vs. numbers

In music theory, there are two basic symbol sets:  letters and numbers.

While the letters specify each individual note, the numbers highlight the general intervals between the notes.

A helpful way to understand this distinction is to think of all the notes in a key as a family, where the letter name of each pitch is like the name of each person while the scale degrees are like the titles used to describe the different members of the group.

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369 | The Musical Insights of Escher

To understand music theory, it helps to know M.C. Escher — the Dutch graphic artist (1898-1972). He was an engineer, mathematician, illusionist, and philosopher as much as an “artist.”

His evolution was fascinating, exemplified by these two self-portraits made six years apart. On the left is “Self Portrait” from November 1929 (age 31), while on the right is “Hand With Reflecting Sphere” from from January 1935 (age 36). Clearly the man’s mind was expanding as time advanced.

And this expansion arose from his studies of symmetry, dimension, and patterns … patterns that are eerily reminiscent of those we see in music.

For example, notice how his self-referential “Drawing Hands” (January 1948) represents the fundamental structure of the circle of fifths. It’s radial symmetry echoes the strange framework of music, where time (or the concept of a beginning and end) becomes abstract.

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