{"id":4644,"date":"2009-08-08T08:40:34","date_gmt":"2009-08-08T12:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=4644"},"modified":"2009-08-08T12:17:42","modified_gmt":"2009-08-08T16:17:42","slug":"a-hand-with-the-circle-of-fifths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/08\/a-hand-with-the-circle-of-fifths\/","title":{"rendered":"a hand with the circle of fifths"},"content":{"rendered":"

(originally posted on Banjo Hangout<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ll give you a hand with this …
\n\"a<\/p>\n

Yeah, that’s my right hand. Spare me the tree-frog comments, but note how I’ve carefully numbered the fingers.<\/p>\n

You play banjo, so you know stuff in the key of G. So you know three chords: G, C and D7. Musicians are fiddly bunch, with all their sharps and flats and all, but notes go A B C D E F G, then back to A as they go up. If you start with G = 1, you’ll see that C = 4 and D = 5. Let’s not worry about the fact that you (probably) play a D7 chord, but look at the key of G hand:
\n\"a<\/p>\n

For some reason (look up chord theory, or chord progressions) the 1, 4 and 5 chords sound good together. Some people write ’em as I, IV and V if they’re feeling all fancy and classical like.<\/p>\n

I hate to break it to you, but not all tunes are in the key of G. I know, it’s hard to take. What if it’s in A? Well, use the hand, with A as the first (or root) chord:
\n\"a<\/p>\n

So to play those nice sounding 1-4-5 chords in A, you need to know A, D and E (or E7, if you’re feeling folky). In this case, the D pretty much has to be the real finger-stretching D chord (hard for us tree-frogs) or it’ll sound naff.<\/p>\n

If you’re singing along to your old Pete Seeger 78s, yer traditional folk\/gospel\/church songs are in C. Hand to the rescue!
\n\"a<\/p>\n

So, for the key of C, you need the chords C, F and G (or G7). F is a nightmare on a guitar, easier on a banjo, easiest of all on an autoharp.<\/p>\n

Just in case you ever need a song in D, here’s that hand again:
\n\"a<\/p>\n

You guessed it – D, G and A (or A7).<\/p>\n

That’s how Chris Coole taught me it. It’s a bit of a simplification, but it works for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(originally posted on Banjo Hangout) I’ll give you a hand with this … Yeah, that’s my right hand. Spare me the tree-frog comments, but note how I’ve carefully numbered the fingers. You play banjo, so you know stuff in the key of G. So you know three chords: G, C and D7. Musicians are fiddly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[1316,47,1607],"class_list":["post-4644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-choons","tag-chords","tag-music","tag-theory"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-1cU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4644"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4651,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4644\/revisions\/4651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}