Easy way to remember the circle of 5ths.
Using the fretboard of your guitar.
Visualizations can sometimes help a great deal when trying to learn and apply mathematical patterns and formulas in music to your guitar. For many years, I have been using this simple way of remembering the keys in music by looking at the fretboard itself, as a pattern. Check it out!
Let’s take another look at the circle of fifths diagram.
Question: “How are you supposed to make heads or tails of this information in this circle, much less memorize it and put it use on your guitar?”
Answer: “Study, apply, memorize, apply, practice, apply, lather, rinse, repeat…”
What can you see?
A seasoned guitarist can normally see many layers of information on the fretboard, ranging from notes to scales, from chord shapes to chord structures and numbers, and everything else in between.
Visualizing the circle of fifths in a linear form instead of a circle, can help you better understand and memorize the keys in music.
Below is another way to see the circle of fifths on the fretboard. You can see that there is indeed, a pattern involved with this form.
You can literally start on any note and see the name and the number of sharps or flats in it’s key.
If you start at “C” on the third fret of the fifth string, you can see that it has no sharps or flats in its key. Follow the arrow to the “G” on the third fret of the sixth string, you can see that it has one sharp (F#). Follow that arrow to the next note, “D” and you can see that it has two sharps in its key (F# and C#). By the time you get to the thirteenth fret, you can see that the pattern has come full circle.
Notice that the key of F# has six sharps, then the next arrow points to the next key which changes over to flats. “Db”.
So, if you’re trying to remember your keys, use this method to help you visualize all of the keys on the fretboard.
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