As we discussed in our post “What is the Circle of Fifths”, it is incredibly important and useful to remember and use the Circle of Fifths, wether you are a musician or music producer.
But how do you actually remember it? How do you remember all 12 keys and how many sharps or flats are in each key?
In this blog we will show you how!
How to remember the Circle of Fifths
To remember the circle of fifths, I simply memorise a phrase, and at the start of each word, is the letter that represents the major key I am in and how many sharps and flats are in the key.
The phrase is
Father Christmas Gets Drunk And Eats Bananas
or more simply
FCGDAEB
We simply have to remember that C major (Christmas in our phrase) as 0 sharps or flats. Then if we continue along right from C, we simply add a sharp to each letter. See example below.
Now let’s say we are in the key of D. We know that D has two sharps in its key. To figure out what sharps they are, we simply go back to the F and count the first two letters (F being the first one). We end up with F & C, we simply add sharps to them and BOOM, we have the sharps that are in D major, F# & C#.
Above is the sharps in D major.
Just to make sure you understand, if we are in the key of A which has 3 sharps, the sharps would be F#, C# and G#.
But how do we work out the flats?
To work out the flats we need to remember that F has 1b, which is Bb. We then jump all the way to the end of our phrase (FCGDAEB) and work from right to left. Just like the sharps, as we move from right to left, we add a flat to each letter. See below for an example.
To work out the flats in each key, instead of starting on F, we now start on B and automatically convert it to a Bb. Once again we move right to left and any convert the notes we need to flats.
For example, if we are in the key of Eb we can see above that Eb has 3 flats.
If we start at Bb and move left to right we get Eb and Ab. So the three flats in Eb major are Bb, Eb & Ab.
See example below.
We hope that helps, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to send us an email 🙂
If you’d like to learn more about Music Theory, then check out our Music Theory Lessons or Music Theory Course.
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Open Eye Studios