From the course: Beginning Acoustic Guitar Music Lessons

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The circle of 5ths

The circle of 5ths

From the course: Beginning Acoustic Guitar Music Lessons

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The circle of 5ths

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- Alright, now that D major scale had two accidentals, F sharp and C sharp, and while they could be just placed before the notes in standard notation, often they're put in the key signature at the beginning of a piece, and that brings me to the next point, the circle of fifths. Now, this circle is very important to know about, and hopefully you guys will memorize this. Basically it just has all twelve notes in a circle. Instead of them being right next to each other, like A, A sharp, B, they are all a fifth away, so C to G is five notes away, C, D, E, F, G, okay? The next one would be to D. So G, A, B, C, D, five notes away, and it continues like that all the way around. And each time that you make that change, there's really only one sharped note that is changed. Alright? Another very important thing to note is that you can go two different directions through that circle. You can either go to the right through the sharp keys or you can go to the left through the flat keys, alright?…

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