Beginner impro Circle (or cycle) of 4ths and 5ths

[Jeanette]

What an amazingly interesting thread... I can see me digging nuggets of information out of this for months to come...

It's going to take me more years than I have left

Jx

 

[kevgermany]

Retournons a nos moutons...

Without scrolling back I think that the OP was wondering why go round the cycle in fourths...

I don't think that anyone has yet mentioned that an awful lot of the jazz repertoire has harmonic progressions based in part on movement in fourths... so getting it in your head that way around is very useful...

But I did, although not quite as distinctly or eloquently.

 

[jbtsax]

@aldevisBut I still don't get the tie between fourths and dominants, sorry.

Think of the "traditional" circle of 5ths. C is at the top at 12 o'clock. To it's right going clockwise is G which is V in the key of C and whose chord wants to resolve to C. To the left going clockwise is F which is IV in the key of C or if we were in the key of F, the C to its right would then be the V whose chord would want to resolve to F which is now the tonic.

I'm confused by the word "perfect". What make those notes perfect? Forgive me as I have a limited theory background. I also get confused with what makes a dominate.

Don't get hung up on the term "dominant". Just remember that the chord built on the 5th step of a scale designated with the Roman numeral V wants to resolve back to the chord built on I (or maybe vi which would be a "deceptive cadence" and the topic of another discussion).

Perfect intervals are those that when inverted, meaning the bottom note is taken up an octave (or the top note is taken down an octave) still produce the same type or class of interval. For example C up to G is a Perfect 5th and G up to C is a perfect fourth. C to C is a perfect unison, and C to C2 is a perfect octave. An exception to this "rule" is the augmented fourth also known as the "tritone". The augmented fourth when inverted produces another augmented fourth. For example C up to F# and F# up to C both produce an augmented 4th or tritone.

In the case of major intervals, when they are inverted, they become minor and vice versa. For example C up to A is a major 6th, and A up to C is a minor third.

A minor interval "stretched" by adding a half step becomes a major interval.
A major interval "shrunk" by taking away a half step becomes a minor interval.
A perfect interval "stretched" by adding a half step becomes an augmented interval.
A perfect interval "shrunk" by taking away a half step becomes a diminished interval.

 

[Tenor Viol]

I'm guessing really but it's depends on your standpoint and how you draw your circle*:
Fourths
C is dominant of F is dominant of Bb is dom of Eb etc. (1 flat - 2 flats - 3 flats - 4 . . . )
or Fifths
G is dominant of C - D is dom of G - A is dom of D (1 sharp - 2 sharps - 3 sharps - 4 . . . )

(P.S. Edith)
@Kev - * I guess again what I'm trying to say is C up to F is a fourth and C down to F is a fifth.
and vice versa C up to G a fifth and C down to G a fourth.
but when you get to six o' clock you have to change from C# to Db or Db to C# then your sharps or flats diminish numerically 7,6,5,4,3,2,1 back to C

That's where sub-dominant gets its name from: it is a fifth below the tonic, ditto sub-mediant being a third below

 

[AndyWhiteford]

I feel sorry for the OP, this thread has drifted WAY off topic and should probably be split.
The cycle of 5ths or cycle of 4ths or cycle is the same thing, nomenclature solely depends on the way you describe the root movement: one man's descending 5th is another man's ascending 4th.
Personally i would think of the descending 5ths [ partly since they are related to descending semitones.]
I'll just say that I normally think of the cycle as creating movement in one direction :
B E A D G C F Bb Eb Ab Db Gb -
that's ANTI-clockwise in the videos linked to by the OP.
if you look at chord sequences of popular standards, you will often see 3 or 4 chord roots that follow the sequence in the order i've shown above.

it's quite a lot rarer to see the chord roots moving in the large sections of the cycle moving "backwards".
you'll rarely see the chord roots C G D A in that order , for example.
if you treat each root as the root of a dominant 7th chord, an d play through the cycle, you will hear the constant "resolution" as you move from B7 to E7 to A7, etc.

anyway - as an exercise, go look at some old pop & jazz standards, see how the roots of the chords often move in big chunks of the "anticlockwise" cycle.

or - if you've heard of the "II-V-I " or "Two Five One" cadence, then note that any three consecutive roots from the cycle above form the roots of the II-V-I

-A-

 

[kevgermany]

I feel sorry for the OP, this thread has drifted WAY off topic and should probably be split.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've split a lot of the OT posts into a new thread:
http://cafesaxophone.com/threads/intervals-from-the-circle-fifths-versus-fourths.14277/


Please keep this thread on topic now.