Hey Friend,

Last night when I checked email, I was greeted with the resounding sound of crickets in reply to my question about exploring some minor keys. I guess you guys were too distracted by Tony Bones' and Sharon Aguilar's cool Halloween lessons. So we'll move forward to the next major key.

If we follow the Circle of Fifths, we can quickly figure out which key is next in line. Starting with a G note (from the key of G major, count up five notes and that gives you the next key in the circle. It also tells us how many sharps will be in the key. Since G major had one sharp (F#), that will be carried on to the next key. Then we'll add another sharp in, so there will be two.

Let's do it. Start with the G note and count up five notes. Since G is the last natural note in Western music, you'll start over on an A note, going into the next octave. 

1   2   3   4   5

G  A   B   C  D 

D Major, come on down! You're the next contestant on "The Major Musical Keys!" Hooray!!!

As I said, D major has two sharp notes in the key. Let's see which ones:

1   2   3   4   5   6   7

D  E  F#  G  A   B  C# 

Remember, the major scale can be figured out by following the scale pattern W W H W W W H.

So F# carries over from the G major scale, and we've added C#. You'll see soon that C# note allows us to add A major to our list of chords. In fact, let's look at the chords that make up the D major harmonic progression.

We've got some repeats in the chord progression from the key of G major. D and G major come over as our I and IV (one and four) chords, and we add A major as the V (five) chord (a little clue as to what our next key will be).

Alright, time to go make the donuts. Have a great one!

Peace~

Dave