How to Use the Circle of Fifths for Songwriting
Believe it or not the Circle of Fifths is actually a tool to simplify your life even though it may look really technical at first glance. It’s particularly helpful for people who are very visual and like seeing diagrams rather than learning through reading.
Many people see it as a diagram that shows how many sharps or flats are in a key. Today we’re not going to use it that way. Instead, we’ll see how it can be used to write songs.
The Circle of Fifths can be used for songwriting by visually showing the chords in major keys, their relative minor keys, and the chords in other keys and modes to borrow chords. It helps songwriters see what their options are when building diatonic major and minor chord progressions, what each chord’s function is under Roman Numeral Analysis, seeing the modes, and borrowing chords from other scales and modes.
This article assumes you have an understanding of the concepts below. If you don’t then check the links to learn about these first and then come back here.
- Intervals
- Major and Minor keys
- Relative and Parallel Modes – Defining Parallel VS. Relative Modes
- Roman Numeral Analysis or the Nashville Number System
- Chord Function – Chord Function: The Compass to Flowing Chord Progressions
- Borrowing chords from Modes (also called Modal Mixture) – How to Write Songs Using Modes
If you’re ready to go then let’s get started.
What is the Circle of Fifths Explained Simply?
The Circle of Fifths is a visual aid in music theory which shows all the chords in every major and minor key organized in a circle. It is used to see the relationships between all keys and scales. It can also be used to build chord progressions, see the chord functions of each chord in a key, see the modes and see how many sharps or flats are in each key.
Major
Minor
Diminished
First Ring: The circle is organized in a ring starting from a C note so that each note to the right is a fifth interval away from the previous until it loops back entirely back to the C note. This is why it’s called the Circle of Fifths. All the chords in this ring are Major.
Second Ring: The second ring is placed inside the first ring and it starts with an A note because it is the relative minor of the C note. Each note in this second ring is the relative minor note of the first ring. Also, just like the first ring, each note to the right is a fifth interval away from the previous note until it loops back to the A note. All the chords in this ring are Minor.
Third Ring: There is a third inside ring that shows the diminished chords. It starts on B and again every note to the right is a fifth interval away from the previous until it loops back to the B note.
Seeing Chords in Major and Minor Keys and Making Progressions
One of the functions of the Circle of Fifths is to be able to visually see the chords that are in a Major or Minor key. This will help you know what chords you can use to make progressions.
See below how they are organized.
CHORDS IN C MAJOR KEY
CHORDS IN C MINOR KEY
This shape that fences in the chords of a key is moveable and will hold the chords of the Major or Minor key you are looking at, depending on where it’s placed.
This little fence is helpful if you want to make chord progressions within one key. It will show you all your chord options. Any chord within the fence is usable in your progression within that key.
Next we’ll see how to move it depending on whether you are looking at a Major or Minor key.
Seeing Chord Numerals Within the Circle of Fifths (Major and Minor)
When you are making chord progressions it’s helpful to know what roman numeral each chord represents in the key. This will help you know its chord function. Let me explain briefly as a refresher.
Each chord within the key has a roman numeral assigned to it. There are 7 notes in a Major or Minor scale so there are 7 roman numerals assigned to them. These are the below:
Major key
I – ii – iii – IV – V – vi – VII°
Minor key
i – II° – III – iv – v – VI – VII
This is useful to know because it allows us to see what the Root note is and by assigning numerals to their respective notes we can see what function they play in the key (Tonic, subdominant, or dominant).
So, if we wanted to make a song in Major or Minor we just move this fence so that the “I” chord (for major) lines up with the key of our song or the “i” (for minor) lines up. Like this:
CHORDS IN C MAJOR KEY WITH NUMERALS
CHORDS IN C MINOR KEY WITH NUMERALS
Let’s apply this to a chord progression.
First we have a C Major chord progression of I – V – vi – IV (Cmaj, Gmaj, Amin, Fmaj).
C Major Chord Progression (in blue)
I – V – vi – IV (Cmaj, Gmaj, Amin, Fmaj)
If we wanted to play it in C Minor we move the fence so that the “i” chord is the C minor. Like so:
C Minor Chord Progression (in blue)
i – v – VI – iv (Cmin, Gmin, A♭maj, Fmin)
So if you want to make a song in Major just look at the Major key you want to use and make sure the roman numeral “I” lines up with that note. And if you want to make a song in a Minor key just look at the note you want your minor key to be in and line up the roman numeral “i” with it.
Seeing The Modes on the Circle of Fifths in Chords
The Circle of Fifths also shows you visually the modes in each key.
Just like the roman numerals, we can arrange the modes to each note in a key. Instead of writing the number of the chord, we put the name of the mode that corresponds to each roman numeral. Like this:
CIRCLE OF FIFTHS IN MODES
Now if you spin the fence, you can line up the note you want to start on, with the mode you want to play and it will show you all the chords of that mode. This is helpful if you want to make a progression with chords from a specific mode.
Simply line up the note you want to start on with the box of the mode you want to see the chords for.
CHORDS OF C DORIAN MODE
As you can see we lined up the Dorian mode box from the top diagram with the Cmin note in the second diagram. This gives us all the chords to C Dorian.
Borrowing Chords from Modes for Progressions
Since the Circle of Fifths shows you chords in Major and Minor keys as well as chords in different modes, we can use it to borrow chords from modes.
So now that we can see the modes on our little fence, let’s use it to borrow a chord from a parallel mode of C for a C Major chord progression.
C Major chord progression
I – V – vi – IV (Cmaj, Gmaj, Amin, Fmaj).
Here are the chords in the Key of C Major on the circle.
C MAJOR CHORDS WITH NUMERALS & PROGRESSION CHORDS SHOWN IN BLUE
Ok now let’s borrow a chord from C Dorian.
Let’s line up the fence so that the C note is on the Dorian square.
MODES BOXES ON CIRCLE OF FIFTHS
DORIAN BOX LINED UP TO C MINOR CHORD (WHICH SHOWS THE CHORDS OF C DORIAN)
CHORDS OF C MAJOR (DARK BLUE) AND C DORIAN (YELLOW), THE CHORDS THEY SHARE (GREEN) AND THE SEVENTH CHORD IN MAJOR VS DORIAN (LIGHT BLUE)
If you look at the chords of C Dorian you will notice the 7th chord (Bbmaj) is Major and flattened in comparison to the C Major scale (Bdim).
Since that last chord (Bdim and Bbmaj) are different in C Major vs C Dorian, we can borrow it to give our C Major chord progression an unexpected flavor.
So the progression including the BbMaj chord borrowed from C Dorian would look like this:
I – V – vi – IV
Cmaj, Gmaj, Amin, Fmaj
I – V – bVII – IV
Cmaj, Gmaj, Bbmaj7, Fmaj
As you can see we changed out the Amin chord which is within the key of Cmaj for a Bbmaj chord from C Dorian.
Putting It All Together
So let’s review what we learned to apply it to make a chord progression using the Circle of Fifths.
- Level 1 – Create Chord Progression in C Major: we chose a chord progression from the chords in the key of C.
- Level 2 – Check the Roman Numerals of our Chord Progression: we checked what the roman numerals are for those chords.
- Level 3 – Borrow a Chord from a Mode: we found chords from C Dorian that we could use in our C Major chord progression.
As you can probably tell this was way more visual than having to look up a bunch of charts to find the chords we needed or trying to remember every combination of chords.
If you memorize the Circle of Fifths, you can eventually visualize it and be able to do all of this in your head on the fly. Pretty powerful.
Wrapping It Up
As you can see the Circle of Fifths is above all else, a visual aid.
It’s way easier to memorize the circle and then apply different music theory concepts to it like keys in major and minor, and modes, using the visualizations we’ve talked about here.
It really isn’t as complicated as it may seem at first and it’s supposed to make things easier for you, so don’t be afraid of it and come back to this lesson anytime you need a refresher.
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