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We searched Yahoo! for the phrase, and while there was no mention of "circle of fifths" in a Yahoo! category, the resulting web page matches were promising. The Educational Technology Music Dictionary defines circle of fifths, a term coined by German musician Johann David Heinichen in 1728: The circle consists of all 12 pitches which are arranged in such a way that any pair of adjacent pitches represents the interval of a perfect fifth. That seemed to make sense, but we still weren't clear on all the terminology. That's why we decided to head back to our search results and visit the Axecellent GuitarSite's
Lesson 18: Circle of Fifths. Here's what they had to say: The Circle of Fifths is an easy way to find out the key a song is in. [It] tells you how many sharps or flats are in a given key. C has no sharps or flats. It is called the Circle of Fifths because as you go clockwise, you go up a fifth. For example, the fifth note of the C major scale is G. The fifth note of the G major scale is D, and so on. Reading that, we realized that the word "fifth" meant moving five notes up or down the scale, thus shedding some much needed light on the first definition we found. Each of these sites features a diagram -- viewing the circle of fifths will definitely help you understand the
concept.
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