Lesson 114

Circle of 5ths Challenge

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Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman.
Well, it's official.
If you've gone through all of my lessons so far,
we've actually been through every possible
major and minor pentascale that exists in music.
Can you guess how many pentascales that is?
Well, let's figure it out.
In music lessons at Hoffman Academy,
we use moveable DO,
which means DO can be on any key black or white, and
DO is always the first or lowest note
of the major or minor pentascale.
For example, if I'm in the D major pentascale, D is DO.
Or if I'm in the F major pentascale, F is DO.
It can be any note. In E-flat major, E flat becomes DO,
but the relationships always stay the same. DO RE MI FA SO
Well, so let's count how many possible notes we could put DO on.
Can you count them with me?
We could have C,
or this black key here is C-sharp one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
and then we're back to C.
So there were twelve possible places we could put DO on.
Another way to think
about it is that there are seven white keys from C to B,
plus five black keys. Seven plus five is twelve.
So this means that you know twelve major and twelve minor pentascales
for a total of 24 different possible major and minor pentascales.
Today I'm going to show you an interesting way to practice all of these pentascales
using
a musical phenomenon called the circle of fifths.
What is the circle of fifths you ask?
Well let's come and find out together at the piano.
To discover the circle of fifths let's kind of go on a journey together of fifths.
Go ahead and try this with me. Place your right hand in the C major pentascale.
Now if C is our starting note, and we wanted to go up a fifth from C,
well that's the distance of five notes,
and in music we always count the first
note when we're measuring
distance as one. So we have one, two three, four, five.
So up a fifth from C would be G.
Now we're going to keep going on this journey. Now G will become our DO, and let's try going up another fifth
from G.
Can you try that with me? What
note would that give us?
one, two three, four, five
Now we're on D.
Well, let's keep going. Now
we're in the D major pentascale,
and let's go up another fifth.
Can you tell me
what note we'd land on? One, two three, four, five
Now we're on A.
Let's keep going from there.
We're going to cover up A major and go up five notes.
A fifth above A: one, two three, four, five
Now what are we on?
A fifth above a is E.
Now let's keep track of this so far
up on the top of the screen. We went from C to G, then G to D, then D to A,
then A to E, now we're going to keep going from there but I'm so high let's do this:
let's come and find an E down low.
So we're going to keep going and going.
So now down here let's
find a fifth above E. Using my E major pentascale
one, two three, four, five. What do I land on?
That's right, the next note is a B.
Now do you remember the B major pentascale? It's
a little tricky. We have,
White, black, black, white, black.
Now a fifth above B is actually F-sharp.
So let's add that to our list of fifths.
So we go B to F-sharp.
Now starting on F-sharp what's a fifth above that?
Our F-sharp major pentascale goes
So a fifth above F-sharp is C-sharp.
Now let's hear shift to flat names.
Don't worry about why for now. So we'll call
this D-flat,
and let's go up a fifth from D-flat.
One, two three, four, five
What note do we land on?
That's right, now we have an A-flat.
Let's find the A-flat major
pentascale and go up the fifth from there.
one, two three, four, five
We land on what?
That's right, E-flat.
Now the E-flat major pentascale, which is black, white,
white, black, black.
Let's see where we land, one, two three, four, five
We landed on a B-flat.
Let's try that pentascale.
Here we go, oh this one is black, white,
white, black, white.
one, two three, four, five
What did we land on?
That's right, an F, and once again let's bring it down to somewhere comfortable,
and we'll play the
F major pentascale, one, two three, four, five
And we land again on C.
Now this is why it's called the circle of fifths.
You can
see that if we start with C and go up a fifth,
and a fifth and a fifth,
We go a
circle through every possible key, all twelve keys
and eventually we arrive back at C.
Pretty cool huh?
That's the circle of fifths.
Now that you
know about the circle of fifths,
you're ready to try the circle of fifths
pentascale challenge.
The challenge is this:
You're g ...