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The question every improviser asks — and a tool that usually answers it. You'll learn to plot a progression's chords on a cycle-of-fifths chart: when they cluster into three adjacent wedges, the middle major chord is your I, the Nashville numbers fall out automatically, and that parent major scale is your go-to. You'll work it on the Module 5 and Little Wing progressions, see how a "home" chord outside the middle slice signals a modal tune, and learn what to do when a song borrows chords or changes key.
What follows is this lesson’s section of the Course Guide — you can read it here or in the full guide →
A cycle-of-fifths chart is a powerful tool for decoding many chord progressions. The one shown below arranges major triads on the outer ring, the roots moving up a perfect fifth with each clockwise step. The inner ring shows the relative minor triad for each major triad. The minor triads are also arranged in clockwise steps of a fifth.
Memorize this: If you mark the chords from a chord progression on the cycle-of-fifths chart, they’ll often fall into three adjacent slices of the circle. When that happens, the positions of the chords reveal each chord’s Nashville numbers as shown:
Recall that the key of the song doesn’t always correspond to the I chord. For example, if we apply this analysis to “Little Wing,” the E minor triad sounds like “home”. The E minor triad sits in the vi position, making the key E natural minor.
The chord that sounds like “home” also tells us the mode of the song. As we just saw, “Little Wing” is in the Aeolian mode because the “home” chord is in the vi spot. If the chord in the I spot sounds like home, the song is in the Ionian mode. ii is Dorian, iii is Phrygian, IV is Lydian, and V is Mixolydian.
When this process doesn’t work, or there are “extra” chords, it can mean that some chords are borrowed from another key or that the song modulates from one key to another. Try analyzing each section of the song separately, and you might find that it makes sense to use a different scale in the chorus than in the verse.
When in doubt, trust your ears. Come up with a few hypotheses for what might sound good, try them out, and pick the one you like the most.
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