The Shape of Music | The Circle of Fifths Part 2

01/08/21 • 21 min

This is the second section of a two-part lesson where we dissect and analyze the circle of fifths, the treasure map to music theory. In the first half, we started learning about how this diagram maps out the relationships among the 12 unique tones of Western music. We examined its history and how it displays key signatures. Join me as we take a look at a few more functions of the circle of fifths.

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The Shape of Music | The Circle of Fifths Part 1

Welcome back to “The Shape of Music,” a five-part series where we take you through the magic of music—how it works and what makes it sound so good. So far, we’ve learned about rhythm (the heartbeat of music) and melody (the “meat and potatoes” of music). We explored the musical alphabet through studying the keyboard. Finally, we navigated the musical language: how different families of instruments produce different colors of sounds. This is the first part of a two-part lesson where we dissect and analyze the circle of fifths, the treasure map to music theory.

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The Shape of Music | Wrap Up

Welcome back to “The Shape of Music,” a five-part series where we take you through the magic of music—how it works and what makes it sound so good. Here we are at the final episode of this series! We ran the whole marathon and now we’re here to walk a mile around the track and be proud of what we’ve accomplished. We’re also going to connect the dots between all of the concepts we’ve been talking about over the past five episodes. If we imagine our musical journey as a puzzle, right now we’ve got five puzzle pieces for each of our episodes. Our job today is to put these pieces together and assemble a wonderful picture through them. Without further ado, let’s take a trip down memory lane!