Cycle of 5th OR Cycle of 4th

[David Vardeh]

I just purchased the program and was going through Vol.1 Module 1 and was watching “Vertical Cycle of fingering” video when I noticed that Richie was talking about the cycle of 5th when the note was going from C to F. I thought this was supposed to be Cycle of 4th unless I am missing something…can you please clarify?

[Richie]

Hi David,
5ths when inverted become 4ths and vice versa. Please watch the video on the Cycle of 5ths for a detailed explanation. It’s in the top menu…go to Lessons VOL1- Chord Studies- Cycle of 5ths.
In functional harmony we usually think in terms of descending 5ths instead of ascending 5ths when denoting root movement and chord resolution. Hence, we say G7 resolves “down” to Cmaj7 instead of G7 resolves “up” to Cmaj7…

[Ron Ellison]

Hi,
so I’m looking for a musical theory “reason” as to why we call it the descending cycle of fifths.
I’ve watched the video several times and it seems more logical to go by ascending cycle of fourths.
As you go around the circle you are going UP a fourth. It’s only a fifth if you turn around and count back to the note you just came from.- which takes more work than to just follow along in fourths. In your answer to David, you say we usually think in terms of descending 5ths instead of ascending 5ths, but we’re ascending in 4ths.
I can just go ahead and believe it to move forward, but it somehow feels like there’s an exact theory reason why it is done this way.

[Ron Ellison]

I found this on the net:

Let’s say we are in the key of C, where G7 is my V chord and C my I.

So while the tritone in G7 (B and F) resolves to the third in C (C and E), the bass (playing the root) goes from the V (G) to the I (C).

If you go from the V down to the I, that is considered a “falling fifth”.

You could of course also go from the G below to the C above. This is not such a strong resolution, but entirely fine. One reason why the following fifth feels like a stronger resolution is because of gravity. It is deeply ingrained in us that something that is higher up has more kinetic energy and more energy is being released when it falls to the ground. Lifting something up from the ground takes energy letting something fall to the ground releases it.

—So while in the demonstration to find what the next 5th is we look at the higher 4th to know what the note the lower 5th would be, …For the song examples, it is actually the lower toned 5th that would be played.
So in other words, it’s a descending 5th because we’re not going up the scale to a higher register, we are playing a lower note than the one before.
Is that right?

[Richie]

I agree with the person who wrote that. I like the “gravity” analogy. It is really the same thing I am saying. Have you watched the video on the cycle of 5ths in the chord studies section?

When we talk about the cycle of 5ths we are doing so in the context of root movement in a chord progression. In any composition or harmony book as well as any instruction I received both in classical and jazz, the dominant always resolves “down” to the tonic, and never “up”. The reason being that if you were to use “4ths” going up instead, your bass which supports and gives definition to any given chord, would end up in a very high register for many of the chords in the progression. In that high range, the root now will loose it’s role as what is known as the “fundamental” in the overtone series. So some chords would loose definition in the progression! They could at some point even sound inverted and some other note in the chord might be identified as the root.

Furthermore, thinking in the cycle of 4ths is something that has become popular among guitarists because of the tuning of the instrument which makes it easier to visualize. That in addition to the fact that most guitarists are notoriously bad at theory because they usually learn in more of an informal Rock context (I was once one of them). On the other hand, all other instrumentalists learn proper theory and sight-reading from the very first lesson.

Don’t know if this puts to rest the dilemma, but it’s all I can say for now. If you rather think in terms of ascending 4ths when thinking of chord progressions, that’s your prerogative, although I don’t recommend it.

[Ron Ellison]

Thank you!
I’m starting to see that this is like subtle interplay inside the chords in relation to the progression.
-and I sure fit in that notorious group!
Hopefully it’s going to change.

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