You Are Reading the First 6 FREE Chapters (470 pages)
Circle of Fifths: Key signatures and Key Relations
The circle of fifths is useful in showing key signatures and key relations, but definitely not for chord progressions.
Many musicians mistakenly think that the circle of fifths actually has something to do with chord progressions. Even authors of books on songwriting and music theory make this mistake, propagating rubbish and confusing their readers to no end.
To be clear: the circle of fifths shows key signatures and key relations—but not chord relations.
Here's an example of what happens when you treat the elements around the clock face of the circle of fifths as chords instead of keys. Presumably, you would want to progress around the circle of fifths as though it's a big circular chord progression. To simplify matters, consider the outer circle only, the elements that would be the major “chords” if the circle of fifths had anything to do with chords (Figure 58):
FIGURE 58: Circle of Fifths: Outer Circle Only