I know, my puns are getting worse.

Happy New Year to all. 2008 is the year I’ll finally “get it” about music. I’ve put together the following chart to explain an anomaly in building key signatures while also explaining chord qualities in relation to scales.

I’m trying to come up with some charts for learning progressions in several keys. I’ve come across an anomaly in the chart that first confused me, but after working it out it seems to make sense. Hopefully, one of you can tell me if my thinking is correct:

Looking at the following chart, you can see that there are missing key signatures. According to the Circle of Fifths, there are 30 key signatures (15 major and 15 relative minor). The reason why there are missing keys for D# Major, G# Major, A# Major, B# minor, E#/Fb minor, and Gb minor is that they cannot be easily assigned accidentals through the key signature system.

The anomaly is from a notation standpoint. Writing out a G# Major scale, for example, would have

G# - A# - C - C# - D# - F - G

something that a key signature would have difficulty indicating since it contains both a G/G# and a C/C#. Using it’s enharmonic twin, Ab - the scale would read correctly with

Ab - Bb - C - Db - Eb - F - G

Now it contains the correct sequence of ABCDEFG and has the correct number of flats that corresponds to the Circle of Fifths and it’s appropriate key signature.

Next I’ll get into how the chords lead into each other and how special chords work within this paradigm.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Rock God. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.