Two easy steps to Memorize the Circle Of Fifths

I'm going to tell you a really easy, fun and effective way to memorize the circle of fifths, and use it in your head without having to draw it down on a piece of paper. This method uses an ancient memorization technique called the memory palace. But first...

Why should you learn it?

The circle of fifths is really useful for a bunch of reasons

1) Find how many sharps or flats are in a given key

2) Find what those sharps and flats are

3) Find what chords are in a given key and what scale degree they are build on

4) Transpose chord progressions into other key

5) Find harmonically strong chord progressions

the list goes on...

What is it?

1)Pick a musical note

2) Go up one fifth (7 semitones) and that is your next note.

3) Repeat until you get back to the note you started with

You will end up using all of the 12 notes that exist on a piano keyboard. So you could arrange them on a clock face like this. (F# and Gb are actually the same note)

But how does that help me?

Well, once you have memorized this circle of notes, there are ways of extracting useful information from it. For example. What are the other major chords in the key of C major. Well they are just the notes to the left and right of the C. That means F major and G major. This rule works of all of the notes in the circle. There are other methods for extracting other useful bits of information, like key signatures, harmonic minors, chord progressions. But first let's learn how to memorize this picture.

How to Memorize it

That meditator is you. Rather than sitting inside an abstract complex mandala of the alphabet. Let's make that picture something more tangible. Imagine you are sitting on the blue mat inside the following room.

This is called a memory palace. Now rather than being surrounded by letters, you are surrounded by characters and objects. The characters start with the letter that you need to remember. Cat = C, Ghost = G etc

Notice how the squashed flat characters represent flat notes. Flat Dog = Db, Flat Ghost = Gb etc

The object with the character (knife, swan, chair, ride-on lawn-mower ect) is telling you how many sharps or flats are in the Major Key built on that Note. But don't worry about them for now.

OK but that picture is still hard to remember

Right. But next I will show you how you can remember where to find objects in this room as easily as you can find your own toilet inside your house. Or your kitchen, or your TV. Our brains find it really easy to find the toilet, and the TV, because that's how our brains evolved. To navigate in 3D space. They did not evolve directly to remember strings of seemingly random letters. Our school systems tell us to use to use wrote learning to memorize things like the circle of fifths. This can require writing it down 100 times, and still that only might work. Other restricting methods involve a mnemonic like Father Charles goes Down And Ends Battle. But this does not give you a mentally navigable structure that you can manipulate to quickly pull different kinds of information from.

The 2 steps - Use a story to Memorize this Room

Rather than writing down the circle of fifths 100 times. Here is something you only do twice, and it is actually fun, novel and memorable.

1) Listen to the story - Auditory and imaginative Learning

Listen to the whimsical short story that goes with this room and mentally imagine what you are seeing.

2) Read the story - Visual/Reading Learning

Read the picture book to see all of the parts of the room properly and engage actively with the content. This book also tells you how to extract the useful information that we mentioned at the start of this article.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085314B7S

Thanks for reading. I hope this has helped you. The memory palace method is truly remarkable, especially when coupled with the story method. Feel free to subscribe below to be notified about new story lessons as they are released. These will be on a range of topics math, science, philosophy etc. Relevant to adults and children.

take care

Shasa Bolton