Guitarists: Unlock the Secrets of the Circle of Fifths with this Essential Guide

Matt: This book was fantastic at explaining the concepts of the circle of fifths. I learned more from this book than I did from years of guitar lessons. Highly reccomend.

Canada on Sep 27, 2023

I T, MD: ten minutes a day on this book for a week have taught me more than what I knew after a whole year trying to play guitar on my own- awesome text, very recommended!

France on Sep 06, 2023

Amazon Customer: To learn the modulation process. It was a very good introduction and I now know there is much more to learn. thanks gr

United Kingdom on Aug 21, 2023

Matt Rodgers: After being self taught to play guitar to a standard ive decided I want to understand theory more, I ve certainly chosen the right start, i can not put this book down. Im working my way through chapter by chapter and going back over each one, i will certainly be looking at more from this book collection.

United Kingdom on Jul 20, 2023

JP: I'm a 76 year old beginning guitar player. My instructor mentioned the Circle of Fifths as we were discussing chords. I bought this book to deepen my understanding and application of chord formations and progressions. It does the job.

United States on Jun 04, 2023

Jon S. Olson: Walks through building the entire "Circle of Fifths" which really helps with understanding what's behind it.

United States on Jun 01, 2023

ncreading: The Circle of Fifths for Guitarists

This is the third Joseph Alexander guitar tuition book I have bought (the first was Modern Music Theory for Guitarists, the other was Sight Reading Mastery for Guitar).

My own situation was that many years ago I had ‘played’ the guitar by rote learning of chord shapes, but with absolutely no knowledge of music. I didn’t have a clue where to find A, B or any other note, or how chords were constructed. I eventually abandoned the instrument. But the guitar always attracted me and when, about three months ago I picked up the guitar again I resolved that I would only make progress if learned some music theory and was able to read music notation (not TAB).

I really appreciate the methodical way Alexander goes through each step, starting from basic concepts that even I could understand. I also appreciated the time he takes to explain each step giving more than one example to make sure that the ideas are firmly grasped by the reader.

I have been really helped by this book and by Modern Music Theory to go from complete ignorance to a good understanding of scales, modes, relative minors, chord construction and chord...

United Kingdom on Mar 01, 2022

Keith Cote: This book teaches exactly what title claims - understanding the circle of fifths and applying it to the guitar. It was a really quick an easy book that provides just enough music theory information to allow you to know everything that goes into generating and applying the circle of fifths. The marrying of the circle of fifths to the guitar, which is of course the basis of this book was clunky at times. It mostly consisted of introducing various fretboard patterns as memory aids to various aspects of circle of fifths. These tricks are kinda moot since the circle of fifths essentially is a cheat sheet so that you don't need to think a whole lot about relative minor scales and how many sharps are in B major. It was at least interesting to see how standard guitar tuning is optimized for easily playing in fifths - arguably the most important interval in Western music. There are also several typos throughout the book, but not enough to be too distracting. But after reading this, I was able to recreate the circle of fifths in my first go (not purely from memory, but intuitively applying the music theory and logic), so I can say I'm satisfied.

United States on Jan 22, 2021

Stephen C. Clark: As one who has attempted to play the guitar over the years, in fits and starts, I decided to take it up again. I always wanted to learn something about musical theory. I have found numerous books on guitar playing, music theory, and the like and most of them referred to the circle of fifths. I have a vague understanding of this concept (sharps clockwise, flats counter-clockwise, but really don't understand how to apply this to playing the guitar. The books I referenced only delve into minimal detail, however my goal is to understand how to actually apply the circle to guitar playing. Those books failed for the most part to do so. For a text to simply state "use the circle in your music playing" may be fine for those musically inclined or with musical training, but for 66 y.o. with minimal background of the subject, help is needed. Scanning through this book, the author starts off with notes, intervals, etc. then quickly delves into scales, keys, then into the prime topics concerning the circle. Therefore, I would suggest having read a book on basic music theory, e.g. Music theory for Dummies, prior to picking up this book to give you a better understanding of music theory. Having...

United States on Jan 05, 2019

dk: I am new to guitar playing and all I really wanted to know was how a capo worked. I mean what was really going on from the standpoint of music theory. Yes, I did poke around on the internet and found many videos, blobs and web pages. I still couldn’t really understand it. Admittedly, I am slow. But while trying to figure this all out I kept coming across this thing called the circle of fifths. Researching that I came across this book. I thought what the heck, why recreate the wheel – somebody else wrote a book trying to explain the concept.
Now I have nothing to compare it to from the standpoint of formal music education, but what I do know is this, if you spend the time to really follow the very systematic explanations you will understand how the circle of fifths is created and more importantly how it is used. In the process of learning that you will also learn how major and minor scales are created and if you really pay attention you can figure out how guitar chords are created off the major scales. I also took the concept and walked it over to the minor scales as well. All in all are there better books on this subject? I don’t know. Do I feel like I have a good grasp...

United States on Oct 07, 2018