Tool: Interactive Circle of Fifths

I hope you have all had a very restful and joyous holiday season. With that, let’s get right back to cool music technology tools!

This one is a VERY simple and effective tool for teaching students (and reminding yourselves) of all of the chords and modes associated with the Circle of Fifths. Sometimes, the easiest and simplest tools to use are the most useful.

With the interactive Circle of Fifths, you simply click the key signature you are interested in, and the graphic displays the Roman numerals of the chords that are in that key - specifically where your I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii chords are. It also displays the tonality of those chords (major, minor, diminished). There is also a set of Modes that you can click to see those chords. For example, if you click C and then Major, you get the graphic above. If you click D and Dorian, you get the graphic below.

Circle of Fifths, created by Rand Scullard, is another one of those tools that I wish I had while I was in college. It would have really helped my music theory grades :)

Bookmark this site today and have your students use it for harmonization, creating chord progressions, teaching modes, and of course, understanding the magic of the Circle of Fifths.