Access To The Circle Of Fifths
This section is aimed at Harmony Signing practitioners who have already worked with the content of Tonicising, The chord of the flattened 7th and its potential, Dominant sevenths and Modulation. It illustrates sequential modulation ‘sharpwards’ and ‘flatwards’ around the circle of fifths.
The following is especially useful as a means of confirming the processes involved both as practical performance and in relation to understanding the music theory represented.
I→I7→tonicise (‘old’ IV moves to) I→I7→tonicise (‘old’ IV moves to) I, and so on.
To illustrate this in terms of starting in C major:
C→C7→F is tonic→F7→B♭→Bflat7→E♭, etc.
This procedure results in flatwards (anticlockwise) progress around the circle-of-fifths. Participants have been known to go through all 12 keys to see if they can retain tuning so as to end up where they started!
For sharpwards modulation, the sequence is as follows:
I→II→II7→tonicise (‘old V moves to) I→II→II7→tonicise (‘old V moves to) I, and so on.
Starting in C major, this would work as follows:
C→D→D7→G is tonic→A→A7→D is tonic→E→E7→A is tonic, etc.