Circle of 4ths & 5ths by Mode

I’ve read over your questions a few times and I’m still struggling to see where you are making the connection, if I could figure this out I could give you a better answer.

Personally I’m not a fan of the Circle of Fifths. In my opinion it takes a slightly complicated subject and turns it into something unnecessarily over-complicated. This is not helped by the amount of books and articles on the subject giving the impression it is some wonderful chart full of insights. The circle of fifths is a chart that points out relationships between key signatures and relative scales or keys. It does not tell us anything about scales themselves, only their relationships, i.e., major and minor. The whole thing in my opinion is a waste of brain space. If this glorified chart can tell us anything at all, it’s things that we should memorise anyway and would be better served written in linear fashion. That’s my opinion of it anyway.

Everything in music theory is relative to the major scale, our starting point if you like. C major has no sharps or flats. If we move five scale degrees up from C, we land on G. If we now consider G as the root of a major scale we end up with a scale that is closely related to the notes in C major, all but one (F) which is sharpened. The same again if we move five degrees up from G we get to D. D major scale is closely related to G major, all but one note (C) which is now sharpened. And so on.

All this tells us is that every time we move up a fifth , or down a fourth, we can change key smoothly because only one note is different between adjacent “fifths” or “fourths”

If we memorise the circle then we can work out how many sharps or flats are in a key signature. For instance, we know that at the top is C. One move left is an F and so the key signature of F has one flat. Move one left again we have Bb. This will have two flats in the key signature. We can keep moving left and add one flat at a time. Do the opposite if we move clockwise to the right. The inner circle shows the relative minor to each of the notes on the outer circle. There is not much more to be learnt from the circle of fifths and it is far more useful to simply memorise the key signatures and their major / minor relationship, if you have a use for such things.

Modes? I can think of nothing to relate the circle of fifths to modes other than the relationship they have to each of the notes on the outer circle, either way, the circle will tell us nothing about modes. C major is relative to A natural minor, no more or less than it is relative to D Dorian, E Phrygian etc., because they all share the same key signature. G Lydian is relative to D major and F Mixolydian is relative to Bb major. This never changes, they are relative because they share the same key signature.

My guess is somewhere along the way you are mixing up scale degrees and “fifth” degrees. The notes that go around the circle are fifths of fifths, i.e., going clockwise, C G D A … G is a fifth of C major; D is a fifth of G major; A is a fifth of D major and so on.

I’m really not sure if I’m making sense or making things worse here so feel free to keep asking questions and I’ll try my best to help you get to the bottom of it.

Lee