Yo Everyone,
Yes, we continuing with the Circle of 5ths! This thing shows you so much! As you can see in this example, there are the number of Sharps and Flats that go with each Key listed. Also, notice the Minor Keys in the inside of the Circle of 5ths. These are the Realtive Keys to the Major scales!!
The Circle of 5ths falls into the category of "something handy to know but not something that you can really practice"... that is, until you begin analyzing songs and/or writing your own songs. Many common chord progressions follow the circle of 5ths. The more familiar you are with this device, the easier you will be able to spot it's use within a song.
Here's a handy sing-song for remembering which notes are sharp or flat in each key:
Flats = Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle.
Sharps = Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles' Father.
:^D
Clifton
...Until Bassdom Comes!
Additional Comments by ActiveBass members: Miquel Soler writes - "Do the minor keys have just as many sharps as the majors? like does F# minor have the same amount of sharps as F# major?"
Rob Terry replies - "Yup, I think it is the way that you base the notes in the song that makes em different. Like if you do 1st, 3rd, 5th, 8th notes of A major(A,C#,E,A) you get a brighter sound then the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 8th or F# minor(F#,A,C#,F#) which is darker, glummier. But both sets of notes are in each scale, it is how you use them. You might want to wait for someone to second this as it is still relativly new to me. Any one?"
Helgi Briem replies - "Well, A major and F# natural minor have the same number of sharps.
However minor keys are tricky and it is common (far more common than not) to alter notes in minor keys. The resulting scales are called harmonic minor and melodic minor.
Why?
Well, in a major key, the V (V7) is the point of max tension in the chord progression. It is the dramatic peak that you reside to before going back to the I in a perfect cadence.
The natural minor has no such peak. It sounds sedate and a little boring. The v sounds stable and comfortable and adding a seventh doesn't change that at all.
So why not sharpen the 7 so you get a V7 instead of a v7 and a far more dramatic cadence back to i? That's what people did and the resulting scale is called the harmonic minor:
1 - 2 - b3 - 4 - 5 - b6 - 7 - 8
An extra sharp (but not the same note as in the key one step up on the circle of 5ths).
But now we have a difficult (for singers) wide leap from the b6 to the 7. What to do?
Well, just sharpen the b6 to a 6 too. This is called the melodic minor and is used for melodies:
1 - 2 - b3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8
On the way down, the leading tone (the 7) isn't needed, so descending melodies just use the natural minor (in classical music). Jazzists often use the melodic minor up and down."
Darcy Gillis replies to Helgi Briem - "How are the extra sharps notated when you have to read a piece that uses harmonic or melodic minors?"
Helgi Briem replies - "They're just notated in the score as accidentals with a # or b sign, just as you would for any other accidental, for example if you wanted to use a b5 as a passing tone.
See this article and this dictionary entry at teoria.com for further info.
Rob Terry replies to Helgi Briem - "two questions Helgi,
1. Was my statement right for the natural minor?
2. Is what you are doing here is adding an "accedental"(the flat six) to the scale to make it less boring?"
Helgi Briem replies to Terry- "1. Yes.
2. Well, not the flat 6, to make the harmonic minor you exchange the b7 for a 7.
You can think of it as an accidental, although its purpose is mainly harmonic (chords) rather than melodic (scales).
In A minor, you use a G# instead of G. This makes our v chord E7 instead of Em. Now the E7 by itself is nothing special, but it sounds so much nicer and more dramatic when it falls back to Am.
Note that if composers were consistent, they'd also change the III chord (C major, C-E-G) to IIIaug (Caug, C-E-G#). But augmented chords sound nasty, so they don't usually do that.
It is fundamentally wrong to think of music theory as a set of rules for what you can and cannot do. It is descriptive of what people have done and found to work. When it works (sounds good), people give it a weird-ass name like "Neapolitan sixth" or something just to confuse the newbies who think it's something really complicated."
Rob Terry replies to Helgi Briem - "Sounds like a good way to spice things up. It seems like a mixing of two types of scales, or an altered scale. I actually think I have an idea where to try that in a song I am currently working on. You are very wise in the way or theory. Thanks Helgi."
