Swing Guitar: Part Four

This is the fourth installment of my series on Swing Guitar comping.  As I've mentioned before, this is my prep work for an upcoming workshop that I will be teaching for the Folk Alliance's winter conference.  Check them out for more information. I hope to see you there!

This lesson will focus on a tool that musicians of every level and genre use: The Circle of Fifths.

I talked a little in previous lessons about how this was used in terms of dominant cycles.  This will be just a brief explanation of how to use the Circle of Fifths as a comping tool and as a reference tool.  There are so many different uses of the Circle that I won't be able to cover all of them here, but I do hope to give you a good working explanation as well as how to use it in Swing Guitar.

What's a Fifth

When we say a fifth, we are talking about an interval between two notes.  In this case, a root (or tonic) note and the fifth degree (or note) on a scale.

To find that fifth, we count the root as one and work our way up the scale.  In the key of C, the fifth note is G.  To build our circle, we keep doing this until we come back to C natural.  In all, there are twelve notes (just like there are twelve positions on a clock; weird!).


The Circle

As a cool little mathematical (read: magic) result, by moving through the twelve notes around in fifths, when we reverse it, we are working in fourths!  Notice that "F" is the fourth degree of the C major scale.

Minor chords

As a reference, many people who use the Circle tend to group the relative minors of each key/chord with the majors already listed.  To find a relative minor, we simply count up six notes on the major scale.  Notice that would be "A" on the C major scale so we use Am.

Below is the circle with the relative minors written in for you.

Dominant Cycle Exercises


Learning to use the Circle as a practice tool can making learning new chords shapes, progressions, scales, arpeggios, licks, or any other melodic or rhythmic device a lot more fun.   Here are some ideas on how to use dominant cycles for practice:

Scales
- Choose a scale such as a mode of the major scale
- Use one fingering to play the scale in C
- Move a fifth to play the scale in G
- Keep moving in fifths around the circle
- Do the same as above moving in fourths

Chord Progressions
- Pick a progression in C keeping chords within two or three frets
- Move a fifth to G and play it again
- Keep moving until you have gone around the circle
- Do this again moving in fourths

Chord Shapes
- Pick a chord shape you are trying to master
- Play the C version of the shape
- Move a fifth to G and play it again
- Keep moving until you have gone around the circle
- Do this again moving in fourths

Again, working in dominant cycles in a great way to learn the relationships of different chords and notes.  And by playing though exercises using the circle, you will inevitably learn the fretboard as well.

Backcycling

Last but not least, I wanted to share something that makes the circle really useful in jazz.  Backcycling is  method of following the chords of a particular key backwards.  Let's look at the C major scale notes again and then harmonize them.

C - D - E - F - G - A - B

Now Harmonized (make them chords)

Cmaj7 - Dm7 - Em7 - Fmaj7 - G7 - Am7 - Bm7b5

Now, let's put them in order with the circle.  Note that the if we look at C and move around the circle in fifths until we run out of notes on the C major scale, we end with B.  So, that is where we will start.

Bm7b5 - Em7 - Am7 - Dm7 - G7 - Cmaj7 - Fmaj7

Now let's look at the numbers for those chords:

vii - iii - vi - ii - V - I - IV

Here is a look at it with all that on the circle.

 

Notice the ii - V - I in there???  In fact, some tunes you will see this cycle work through from start to finish!  This means that if you can master this harmonization of the circle in all keys you have the bare bones to learn a lot of the jazz and swing repertoire that is out there!

Take a look at all this and have fun with it.  If you have any questions, feel free to post them and I'll do my best to help explain!

~Danny