Tags: posts polarity-music Bitwig Bitwig-5.3b3 Harmony Tutorial Preset

Circle of Fifths in Bitwig

Tutorial | Jan 06, 2025

In this video, I explore harmony theory beyond the typical diatonic framework, encouraging viewers to use the circle of fifths for a broader understanding of chord progressions. I demonstrate how to create more interesting harmonies by borrowing chords from outside the standard scale and discuss using a visual tool I've developed to facilitate this process. This approach allows for more creative freedom in music composition by enabling experimentation with different scales and chords while maintaining a tonal center.

You can watch the Video on Youtube

Summary

Maybe you don't watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

In this video, I dive deep into harmony theory with a focus on moving beyond traditional diatonic frameworks. While many YouTube tutorials on harmony theory stick to building scales and chords from diatonic frameworks, my aim is to broaden the perspective by incorporating the circle of fifths. Starting with the basics, I demonstrate how to construct the C major scale on a piano roll using all white keys: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and back to C. From this scale, we can build diatonic chords such as C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, and B diminished, but sticking to this method can sometimes feel limiting and a bit boring.

To escape these limitations, I introduce the concept of modal interchange, which involves borrowing chords from other scales to add interest. For example, changing the G major to G minor introduces a non-diatonic note into the C major scale but still sounds harmonious. By only adhering to diatonic structures, one may inadvertently limit their musical creativity. Platforms like Ableton Live or Cubase use scale highlighters, which further reinforce sticking to a single scale.

To illustrate a wider approach, I introduce the circle of fifths. I have a preset visual tool, which resembles a circle denoting each step a fifth apart or seven semitones up, starting from C back to C. This circle highlights both major and minor chords and shows how you can explore chords outside the diatonic scale without losing harmonic sense.

This approach allows you to easily switch between chords on the circle of fifths, but it can complicate maintaining a tonal center. Despite that, using chords outside the diatonic C major scale can result in perfectly harmonic compositions. This method is exemplified using a circle of fifths preset I created, which I will share in the video description.

In addition to the circle visualization, I introduce an alternative method using a list configuration of the circle of fifths. This layout aligns chords horizontally, maintaining the harmonic relationships found on the circle. By automating chord selections, you can experiment with chord progressions without needing to deeply understand their theoretical underpinnings immediately. This experimentation can generate chord progressions in different scales while simplifying playing melodically over them.

I conclude by demonstrating how to use these ideas to create music using simple chord progressions and melodies. By leveraging the circle of fifths, my intention is to provide a toolset that empowers musicians to push beyond the confines of diatonic boundaries and explore more varied harmonic possibilities. Thanks for watching; I hope you learned something new or at least found it inspiring to explore beyond traditional harmony theory. Please leave a like, comment, and subscribe for more content, and feel free to ask questions or share your thoughts in the comments below.

Transcription

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00:00] Hey, folks, welcome back to another video.
[00:00:02] And today we are gonna dive deep into some harmony theory.
[00:00:07] And please stick with me.
[00:00:08] I tried to make it as easy as possible
[00:00:11] and probably some piano players in the comments
[00:00:14] are already going, yeah, let's just learn the piano, dude.
[00:00:18] But we do sometimes do stuff on this channel for fun.
[00:00:22] And sometimes you learn also something about it.
[00:00:24] And sometimes you can also make some people connect
[00:00:28] some dots here and there.
[00:00:29] So it's usually pretty fun.
[00:00:34] So when you watch YouTube tutorials about harmony theory,
[00:00:38] they usually stick to the diatonic framework.
[00:00:43] So they go something like, oh, let's build a scale first, right?
[00:00:47] You can build a scale pretty easily on the piano roll here.
[00:00:49] Let's build actually the C major scale.
[00:00:51] So it's all the white keys, right?
[00:00:53] You start on C, then you have D here, E, F, G, A, B, and C again.
[00:01:00] I'll just remove C here.
[00:01:01] So that's the C major scale.
[00:01:04] Pretty easy, pretty simple, all the white notes on the keyboard.
[00:01:07] Yeah, that's how it is.
[00:01:09] And then I tell you, you can actually build chords from this.
[00:01:13] So we take all these notes and you can build diatonic chords, right?
[00:01:17] The first chord is, of course, here C.
[00:01:21] And then skip a note here, then use this, skip a note, and you have a C major.
[00:01:27] And then you build all the other diatonic chords from this scale, right?
[00:01:31] So this is D minor, then we have E minor, then we have F major, then we have G major.
[00:01:42] Actually, extend this here.
[00:01:46] Then we have B minor.
[00:01:47] And then we have here a diminished.
[00:01:51] So these are all the chords.
[00:01:57] You probably heard this a thousand times, because it's diatonic and it's kind of boring.
[00:02:08] So they invented something to stick to this framework of diatonicness and invented something
[00:02:15] like modal interchange, right?
[00:02:18] So they say, oh, let's take actually here the fifth and it's a major chord.
[00:02:24] So why not exchange it for a minor chord to make it more interesting?
[00:02:31] It still works, but this note is actually not in the scale of C major, right?
[00:02:38] So it borrows basically a note or a chord from a different scale.
[00:02:43] And this is fine and completely OK to do it.
[00:02:47] But what I want to tell you is why not actually see the bigger picture and remove some curtains
[00:02:53] from that, because you limit yourself basically to something.
[00:02:58] And also you have like an able live or Cubase, you have like these scale highlighters that
[00:03:02] just highlight a scale for you and then you stick to the scale and you kind of limit yourself
[00:03:07] in a way with this.
[00:03:10] So here is an idea to actually look at this on the circle of fifth.
[00:03:15] So I have a preset here I made a few years ago.
[00:03:19] It looks like this, maybe I'll attach it here, actually close this.
[00:03:27] So here we have all the chords and of course the scale.
[00:03:30] So let's look at this here on the circle of fifth.
[00:03:32] So I made the circle of fifth in the grid.
[00:03:35] And see I'm starting at C and it goes around the circle back to C and each of these steps
[00:03:41] is a fifth away or seven semitones up, right?
[00:03:44] From C, seven semitones up is G, seven semitones up is D, A and so on, right?
[00:03:52] It's a circle of fifth, that's how it works.
[00:03:55] And then we have outside here normally it's inside but on my it's a different circle.
[00:04:00] It's outside.
[00:04:01] We have the minor chords, right?
[00:04:02] So instead of C, we go here to A minor and the reason for that is A minor shares the
[00:04:08] same notes with C major.
[00:04:10] It's just three semitones lower from the root key and it shares the same notes, all the
[00:04:17] white keys, but it's just starting on a different note.
[00:04:20] So you have different intervals between all the chords.
[00:04:24] That's the reason behind it.
[00:04:25] So maybe a disable also your seventh and at nine.
[00:04:28] So this is now a major chord.
[00:04:33] You can see C major here with some bass notes added, of course, but it's just here one,
[00:04:38] two, three, right, a major triad.
[00:04:42] So this is this, right?
[00:04:44] So we can say this here is the one chord of C major, a big Roman number because it's a
[00:04:50] major chord.
[00:04:51] Then the second one is D, this is D minor.
[00:04:55] So this is the second one, small numbers or small a charge for minor key or minor chord.
[00:05:05] Then we have E, also small, three.
[00:05:13] Then we have F, which is major.
[00:05:16] This is the first big chord here is the fourth, actually it's a seven semitones down, right?
[00:05:26] C is the root or the tonic, seven semitones down.
[00:05:31] And then the next one here is seven semitones up.
[00:05:33] It's also important, the fifth.
[00:05:40] And you probably already heard this also a thousand times, right?
[00:05:43] It's pretty common.
[00:05:47] They are very harmonic together.
[00:05:50] So harmonic, it's super boring, actually.
[00:05:54] Then from the fifth we go up to A, which is here, it's also minor, so a six.
[00:06:05] Then we have the B here, which is diminished.
[00:06:11] And then we have to use this small little circle here also, where's the B here.
[00:06:20] I can't do it on this keyboard here, what I have.
[00:06:24] Okay.
[00:06:25] So this is the diminished chord.
[00:06:26] And you can see we have all these chords we are using in our scale, in the C major scale,
[00:06:33] pretty close together.
[00:06:34] And you can see that some of these chords are also around it, but they are not part of
[00:06:41] the scale of C major.
[00:06:42] They have or they use notes outside of the scale.
[00:06:46] But you can still use them because they are on the circle of fifth.
[00:06:49] So in fact, you can circle around the circle of fifth pretty easily from one chord to the
[00:06:55] other and it sounds fine, but you miss the tonal center.
[00:06:59] But if you just use some chords here outside of this diatonic scale, you are still fine.
[00:07:07] So you can do something like this.
[00:07:13] So the D major here is not kind of part of the C major scale, because you can see here
[00:07:20] you are using F sharp at some point for one chord note.
[00:07:24] So it's not in the scale, but all the rest is and it just makes sense here.
[00:07:37] And what I want to tell you is see maybe the bigger picture that you are limiting yourself
[00:07:43] with this diatonic stuff here, way too hard.
[00:07:47] And it's so much easier to see this or to watch this on the circle of fifth, because
[00:07:53] you have more solutions here, right?
[00:07:54] So you can go here, you can go here, you can go here instead of just sticking to these
[00:07:59] five chords, two, four, six, seven, yeah, seven is diatonic, of course, seven chords.
[00:08:08] So you can much more about it.
[00:08:11] The problem here with this preset is that I share you in the description below, of course
[00:08:16] I made this a few years ago, is that you can't play it on the keyboard.
[00:08:20] You have to use these buttons here.
[00:08:22] But my main idea with this preset was to show you a visual circle that you can use with
[00:08:30] your mouse.
[00:08:31] You can still record it, of course, to the note clip if you want to, and we can do this
[00:08:37] maybe here.
[00:08:40] So let's create you an instrument track.
[00:08:43] And instead of my MIDI keyboard, I'm using here the Polymer channel and the circle of
[00:08:48] fifth output, then just record the stuff here, or maybe don't start with the Am.
[00:09:02] We start with the A minor.
[00:09:05] Why is there no pre-roll?
[00:09:07] Sometimes there's no pre-roll in Bitwig and I have no idea why.
[00:09:11] No, it works.
[00:09:29] Let me go back here after five, maybe here.
[00:09:37] So you can play this and record this into the piano roll and then use this chord progression.
[00:09:43] And sometimes it's so fun to just play, you know, push these buttons and come up with
[00:09:48] something that sounds good.
[00:09:50] And then you have a lot of different notes here already in the piano roll that you can
[00:09:55] use for chord progression that actually sounds, it looks like very pleasing going down here.
[00:10:03] So yeah, that's a way of doing this.
[00:10:04] Maybe I do another one here, another run, maybe open this up.
[00:10:09] Maybe make it a bit faster here, not 20.
[00:10:26] And then go back.
[00:10:30] And let's put here a piano, maybe, a piano tech on that.
[00:10:50] Easy peasy chord progression just with this, with this tool, maybe a bit of different settings
[00:11:00] here.
[00:11:12] So the problem now here is when you have this chord progression and you want to play something
[00:11:15] on top, you have to use the notes from the scale.
[00:11:19] So this is a scale, this is a scale, this is a scale, so all different scales.
[00:11:24] And you don't know which notes you can use on top.
[00:11:26] You can use notes you already use here, so you can use this to make maybe an arpeggio
[00:11:32] on top or play a melody on top, but maybe you have not enough notes.
[00:11:37] You want to have more.
[00:11:38] You want to use the complete scale.
[00:11:41] So my idea for this was instead of using the circle of fifth preset here, which is still
[00:11:48] good, in my opinion, we can disable this and choose another preset that I want to share
[00:11:54] with you.
[00:11:55] It's called Circle of Fifth Keys, it looks like this.
[00:11:59] So instead of having here a circle, we have kind of a list.
[00:12:03] So we start also here at C, so you can see here at the top, we have C here, then we go
[00:12:09] to G, it's the next one, then go to D here.
[00:12:13] So it's just the same circle, it's just in a kind of list way.
[00:12:17] The problem with the list is that we want sometimes to go from C here to F, right?
[00:12:24] Because it's also just the fifth part.
[00:12:26] But C to F is actually going to the last position here, F, right?
[00:12:33] So it's kind of a circle, but cut in half and then split up into a list.
[00:12:40] So that's a bit of a problem, but if you know how it works, you can easily then use it.
[00:12:47] So with this, we don't need to actually use here the circle of fifth preset anymore.
[00:12:53] What we can do now is we can play just in one scale.
[00:12:58] In maybe a scale we already know or familiar with.
[00:13:01] So let's say C, so we can play here a chord, something like this, maybe this chord, maybe
[00:13:15] bass notes, maybe two bass notes, then we make some kind of groove to it, or something
[00:13:34] like this.
[00:13:35] So we put the groove to it, put some evolution on there, then we can switch to a different
[00:14:05] scale here.
[00:14:33] And then you can try and record the stuff.
[00:14:36] So maybe let's start here with D# major, or maybe with D# minor, because I really love
[00:14:41] this scale.
[00:14:46] So we can record this here to the automation data, right?
[00:14:49] So we enable this here and then we just start with D.
[00:15:05] Yeah, that's not what I need here.
[00:15:07] So we start here with D minor, and you can see because this is here a selector list,
[00:15:11] we have here also the naming inside of the automation lane.
[00:15:17] Let's make this a bit bigger.
[00:15:19] So this is D# minor, then we switch it to A# minor, and then we switch to F minor, right?
[00:15:37] So chord progression in a lot of different scales, I have no idea how they are related,
[00:15:42] but in my opinion it sounds harmonic.
[00:15:45] So let's call this chords.
[00:15:49] Now you want to play something on top, right?
[00:15:51] So what you do is you probably create a new piano, whatever, let's use here this one.
[00:16:06] So we want to play something on top, but you have no idea what kind of scale is in.
[00:16:12] So we take the circle of fifth and just move it, click and drag, and then hold down here
[00:16:18] to control, just clone it, and you can see the automation is still in place.
[00:16:24] So we can open this up here and see, it's the same thing, it's still in place, right?
[00:16:30] It's the same automation on here.
[00:16:34] So now we can record on top, a melody on top, and we play still in C major.
[00:16:43] So C is always the root, and we can then here move to a different place.
[00:16:54] So I show you that I'm playing actually on C major by using here, what's the name, virtual
[00:17:00] keyboard.
[00:17:02] Okay.
[00:17:03] So what you see down here is what I'm playing on the keyboard.
[00:17:11] Let's play C.
[00:17:18] So C is always the tonic of the current scale, and E or G is always the fifth.
[00:17:29] So here we are on A minor, so this is, this is A sharp minor.
[00:17:35] So yeah, so here we play more or less A sharp minor or A sharp, maybe put your virtual keyboard
[00:17:47] on here and see how it's changing.
[00:17:53] So again, input/output.
[00:18:02] So I'm transposing basically the C major scale around and then I'm fitting into the
[00:18:07] correct scale, and then I'm also using here this selector to order it in a way of how
[00:18:15] it would be ordered on the circle of fifths.
[00:18:18] So it's pretty easy idea actually, but it works sometimes.
[00:18:24] So let's play this here and we can play along.
[00:18:50] Expressing the same chord over and over, it's just C major chord I'm playing, but it fits
[00:18:55] the scale because we are using here the automation and change the layer.
[00:19:00] So it's a very simple preset actually, it's, I feel actually bad to make a video about
[00:19:06] it because it's so simple, but I share this with you in the comments in the description
[00:19:12] down below so you can download it for free, so you can play on C major and then just circle
[00:19:19] around the circle of fifth here and find some interesting progressions and melodies, of
[00:19:25] course, maybe record it here.
[00:19:42] So, that's it.
[00:20:05] A point that becomes a bit jazzy, but you can play around with this and you can, of course,
[00:20:30] this is then for some generative patches or let's say a sequencer, a step sequencer, you
[00:20:35] play only on C major with a step sequencer, go through the circle of fifth thing here
[00:20:40] and then you can change the scale on the fly and come up with some interesting patterns.
[00:20:46] I don't know.
[00:20:47] So that's the video for today.
[00:20:49] I hope it's not too complicated and you get what I mean, I probably use some terminology
[00:20:55] wrong all the time.
[00:20:57] I don't care.
[00:20:58] Let me know in the comments below.
[00:21:01] Thanks for watching.
[00:21:02] Leave a like, leave a subscription.
[00:21:03] See you next time.