Posted by Zed Shaw | 2010-03-25 20:19:23.943606 Discuss This Shed

This shed post is a simple mnemonic trick for memorizing two very important parts of music theory. First is the "Cycle of 4ths" and second is the triads that make up all major chords. Memorizing these will help with figuring out the notes in a chord, chord changes, and many other elements of harmony.

The way I'm going to show you how to memorize this is a little different from how most musicians are taught. That's because I'm a programmer, so I try to find easier ways to memorize the few things I need to know. Rather than memorize a ton of useless information, I look for a few patterns that and mnemonics that help you memorize the information and use it.

Cycle Of Fourths

First, let's do the cycle of fourths since that's the easiest. What's meant by the "cycle of fourths" is you pick a root note C, that's the key you're in. Then you pick the 4th note in that scale, and move to the next key F. From F you pick the 4th note and move to that key and you're in Bb. For example, if you were to have this chord progression:

|: Cmaj7 | Cmaj7 | Fmaj7 | Fmaj7 | Bbmaj7 Bbmaj7 :|

Then you could play along in the cycle of 4ths over this by first playing a C major scale, then an F major scale, then a Bb major scale.

The very easiest way to memorize the cycle of fourths is to do two things:

1. Realize that the word "BEAD-G" is the key to the cycle.
2. Practice playing all your scales in the cycle.

A key to memorizing anything is to find a basic pattern in the structure and memorizing that, rather than memorizing everything. If we take the all the notes in the cycle they go like this:

C F Bb Eb Ab Db Gb B E A D G

At which point it repeats itself. Now, if we strip out the repetitive flat notes have this:

C F BEAD-G BEAD G

Now memorizing the cycle is saying this while you play:

"C F (flat)BEAD-G BEAD-G"

Which means, you play C F, BEAD-G in flat keys, and then BEAD-G. That's it, but a really great way to practice this, which I've been doing for a while now is to try this:

1. Take a scale form you want to work on, say, 5th string starting on middle finger.
2. Play each scale in the cycle of 4ths jumping up and down the string.
3. After you can find each one, move up to singing the root note as you play each of the scales in the cycle.
4. Now level up by trying to do all that while looking up at the ceiling and not at your guitar.

Another exercise it to do all of your scale forms from one position following the cycle of fourths. For example, do all the keys in the cycle but don't go above the 8th fret, or 6th fret.

What the above exercises should do is train your ear to hear the movements in 4ths, to hear when you're in the right key, and to find notes on your guitar. It's not the only exercise that does this, but it's a fun way to practice boring scales.

Memorizing Triads

Triads are the fundamental parts of basic chords, and the basis of harmony. If you know the triads for all the chords then it's easy to build arpeggios, analyze a song, figure out what makes up a chord, or discover new chord shapes on your guitar. It's also something lots of other musicians have problem remember so if you memorize it you can impress everyone like you know something.

Normally you're told to just memorize all the notes in all the triads for all chords in every key with all the sharps and flats in the right places. For example, you'd be told that these are the triads for B, Eb, and D major chords:

B-D#-F# Eb-G-Bb D-F#-A

Nice, so you've got tons of sharps and flats and it's very hard to see the pattern. Next they'll tell you nonsense such as, "To make a chord flat you just flat the 3rd which makes a B minor chord B-D-F#." Oh that's even more to memorize.

However, an important rule of triads is the name of the notes stays constant, it's only the sharp/natural/flat designator that changes. If you know that, then memorizing the notes is obviously the most important thing, and it's also the easiest to do. First you just remember the notes in order (which does require memorizing):

CEGBDFAC

That's all the notes you need to remember, and in that order. From this you pick any note and you'll know the name of the notes in that chord. This is important because the name isn't the real note, it's just the first step. You'll then just need to figure out what gets sharped and flatted for each chord, whether it's major, minor, diminished, or augmented.

Let's try it, without the sharps and flats required, for the first part of the cycle of 4ths. Next to the names of the notes, we'll show them again with the required flats:

• C CEG C-E-G
• F FAC F-A-C
• Bb BDF Bb-D-F
• Eb EGB Eb-G-Bb
• Ab ACE Ab-C-Eb
• Db DFA Db-F-Ab
• Gb GBD Gb-Bb-Db

This list is organized as simply the key (Eb) followed by the names of the notes in the triad (EGB), and then the actual notes using the sharps or flats notation (Eb-G-Bb).

How I went about memorizing this is I just kept repeating "CEGBDFAC". I would say it more like, "CEG EGB GBD BDF DFA FAC ACE" or other combinations of those triads.

Then I went through the cycle of 4ths and played each actual note with it's correct sharps and flats. Doing this often enough and I quickly memorized them very well.

An important thing to note is that I memorized these using the cycle of 4ths. If you use the cycle of 5ths this becomes a fairly easy exercise because the third note in a triad is the next note in the cycle of fifths. Think about that for a while, and you'll see a way to practice both triads and cycle of 5ths (not 4ths) is to repeat the notes in the cycle like this:

CEG GBD DFA ACE EGB BDF F#A#C# ...

Finding as many different ways to view these structures is what will help you figure out new things about music.

Cool Stuff You Can Do

Alright, so you memorize these two structures and then what can you do? Apart from impressing your friends at stupid parties (even though playing the guitar is probably more impressive), you can actually figure out structures very quickly. You can also decipher chords quicker.

For example, if you're given the instructions "play the 4th then the 3rd from C" you can snap out of your head to play "F E C". If you are given a chord of C/G (C with G in the bass inversion) then you know it has "G-C-E". If you see notes in a song of "G-Bb-Db" then you know that's a G diminished chord.

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