The Circle of Fifths

Tessitura uses the Circle of Fifths to organize and relate scales and modes. In order to understand Tessitura it is essential that you understand how the circle of fifths works and how we can use its properties to analyze and organize scales and modes.

We have a fun set of 5 videos explaining the whole circle of fifths theory on the  mDecks Music YouTube channel here…

Here’s the circle of fifths in the key of C. We organized the 12 notes in music by perfect fifths. So every node in the circle is a perfect fifth apart from the previous node.

The key of the circle is always the Top Node.

In Tessitura we graph scales by connecting the nodes in the circle that belong to the selected scale

So there’s the graph for the  C Ionian  or Major scale.

One of the benefits of this graph is that now you can find find  all the modes of the Ionian scale  by  rotating the graph  around the circle. You just need to make sure the  top node always belongs to the graph .

There’s the  G Mixolydian  scale, which is the same graph as the Ionian but rotated one node counter-clockwise

Tessitura Pro by  mDecks Music