Quintum: Talking about music in simple words

The Quint Key Circle (or Quart-Quint Circle) is a graphic scheme used by musicians to visualize the relationship between the keys. In other words, it is a convenient way of organizing twelve notes of a chromatic scale.

For the first time, the quart-fifth circle was described in the book “The Idea of ​​the Musician Grammar” from 1679 by the Russian-Ukrainian composer Nikolay Diletsky.
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A page from the book “The Idea of ​​the Musikima Grammar”, which depicts a quint circle

You can start building a circle from any note, for example, up to. Further, moving in the direction of increasing the pitch, we postpone one quint (five steps or 3.5 tones). The first quint is C-salt, so the C-key is followed by the C-key. Then we add one more fifth and we get sol-re. D major is the third key. Having repeated this process 12 times, we will finally return back to the key in C major.

The quint circle is called quart-quint because it can be constructed with the help of quarts. If you take a note before and lower it by 2.5 tones, then we also get a note of salt.



Lines are connected notes, the distance between which is equal to half a tone

Gayle Grace notes that the quinte circle allows you to count the number of characters in the key of a particular key. Each time, counting down 5 steps and moving in a fifth circle clockwise, we get a tonality, the number of signs in which is sharp one more than in the previous one. The key in C major does not contain alterations. In the key of G major one is sharp, and in the key of C sharp there are seven.

To calculate the number of signs of a flat with a key, you must move in the opposite direction, that is, counterclockwise. For example, starting from before and counting down the quint down, you will come to the key of F major, in which one sign is flat. The next key will be in B-flat major, in which two signs are flat at the key, and so on.

As for the minor, the minor scales, which are identical to the major ones by the number of characters at the key, are parallel (major) tonality. To determine them is quite simple, you just need to build a small third (1.5 tones) down from each tonic. For example, a parallel minor key for C major would be in A minor.



Very often major tonalities are depicted on the outer part of the quint circle, and minor ones on the inner part.

Ethan Hein, a professor of music at the State University of Montclair, says that the circle helps to understand the structure of Western music of different styles: classical rock, folk-rock, pop-rock and jazz.

“Tones and chords, which are located close to each other on the quinte circle, will be considered by most Western listeners to be consonant . The keys in A major and D major have six identical notes in their composition, so the transition from one to another occurs smoothly and does not cause a feeling of dissonance. A major and E flat major have only one common note, so the transition from one key to another will sound strange or even unpleasant, ”explains Ethan.

It turns out that with each step in the fifth circle in the initial scale in C major, one of the tones is replaced by another. For example, the transition from C major to the adjacent G major leads to the substitution of only one tone, and moving five steps from C major to C major leads to the substitution of five tones in the initial scale.

Thus, the closer to each other are two specified keys, the closer the degree of their relationship. According to the Rimsky-Korsakov system, if the distance between tonalities in one step is the first degree of kinship, two steps are the second, three are the third. The keys of the first degree of kinship (or simply related) are those major and minor keys that differ from the original key by one sign.

To the second degree of kinship are the tonality, which are related to the related keys. Similarly, third-degree kinship tonalities are the first-degree kinship tones to the second-degree tonalities.

It is related to the degree of kinship that these two chord sequences are often used in pop music and jazz:

• E7, A7, D7, G7, C

“In jazz, the key tones are most often changed in a clockwise direction, and in rock, folk and country - against,” says Ethan.

The appearance of the quint circle was due to the fact that the musicians needed a universal scheme that would allow to quickly identify the ratio of tonalities and chords. “If you understand how the quint circle works, you can easily play the chosen key - you don’t have to painfully pick the right notes,” concludes Gail Grace.