Hey Music Theory Followers! I wanted to make an amendment to the video to offer the following caveat for Chord Progression 4. You might be wondering why the circle of 5ths went from Ab to D and not Db. Please read the explanation below! Great question! Yes, if I wanted to go all the way around the circle of fifths until I ended back at C, I would have gone Db, Gb, B, E, A, D, G, C. The problem is - it's really long! Many songs that use the circle of fifths in their chord progressions never play the whole thing. What they do, is take a short cut. Instead of playing the circle of fifths, they play the "semi-circle" of fifths. Once they get to the bottom of the semi-circle (half of the circle), they jump directly across, and take the last couple of chords home. Jump into a new tab and pull up a diagram of the circle of fifths and follow along below: For example, look at the chord progression for I Will Survive or Autumn leaves. I Will Survive is in A minor. It goes Am-D-G-C-F. But instead of going to Bb after, it goes Bm7b5 - E - Am. This short cut works because it tricks the ear into a 5th movement that we expect with a perfect resolution into the next chord (E). Autumn Leaves is almost identical except the shortcut is taken 1 chord earlier. It goes, Am - D - G - C - F#m7b5 - B, Em. This shortcut happens after C. It doesn't go to F, it goes to F#. The rule of thumb is to play a chord 1 semitone higher than the circle would naturally go and then follow the rest of the circle home. The chord quality doesn't really matter - it depends on the melody you're harmonizing. In the video, I played a major chord - these examples used half-dim chords. Next time when you're playing, try it out. You can take the shortcut from really anywhere. Try it after the second, third, or fourth chord. You can get interesting results!

is this the end of the series?

@LearnMusicTheory

Жыл бұрын

It is for now - there are many more I would like to do though!

I don't understand Chord Progression 4. D is not the 5 (or 4) of Ab, Db is. So shouldn't the last two chords be Db Gb?

@LearnMusicTheory

2 жыл бұрын

Great question! Yes, if I wanted to go all the way around the circle of fifths until I ended back at C, I would have gone Db, Gb, B, E, A, D, G, C. The problem is - it's really long! Many songs that use the circle of fifths in their chord progressions never play the whole thing. What they do, is take a short cut. Instead of playing the circle of fifths, they play the "semi-circle" of fifths. Once they get to the bottom of the semi-circle (half of the circle), they jump directly across, and take the last couple of chords home. Jump into a new tab and pull up a diagram of the circle of fifths and follow along below: For example, look at the chord progression for I Will Survive or Autumn leaves. I Will Survive is in A minor. It goes Am-D-G-C-F. But instead of going to Bb after, it goes Bm7b5 - E - Am. This short cut works because it tricks the ear into a 5th movement that we expect with a perfect resolution into the next chord (E). Autumn Leaves is almost identical except the shortcut is taken 1 chord earlier. It goes, Am - D - G - C - F#m7b5 - B, Em. This shortcut happens after C. It doesn't go to F, it goes to F#. The rule of thumb is to play a chord 1 semitone higher than the circle would naturally go and then follow the rest of the circle home. The chord quality doesn't really matter - it depends on the melody you're harmonizing. In the video, I played a major chord - these examples used half-dim chords. Next time when you're playing, try it out. You can take the shortcut from really anywhere. Try it after the second, third, or fourth chord. You can get interesting results!

@TakeTheFallActHurtGetIndignant

2 жыл бұрын

​@@LearnMusicTheory Actually I'm not a music theory beginner. I'm familiar with this solution as a workaround (pun intended). My 2 cents: You should at least mention this concept in the video. Otherwise you could leave a newbie very confused, staring at his circle of fifths chart for hours, wondering why it isn't clicking for him. Especially if you're going to annotate the chords with roman numeral "V", which suggests that each chord is literally preceded by it's V chord (because as I note, Ab is not the V chord of D, but your diagram labels it as such). I think it's worth more than a casual mention. You should point out that each chord is preceded by a chord having its root a perfect fifth's interval away (diatonically), with the exception of that skipping trick, which in this case is a diminished 5th.

@LearnMusicTheory

2 жыл бұрын

@@TakeTheFallActHurtGetIndignant Thanks! I appreciate your input. I completely agree that this caveat should have made it into the video. I will look into annotating it, if possible, to include a link this conversation.