from South Africa..the mysterious coltrane circle has always intigued me..as a guitarist improvisation has always been challenging..

😺 Fantastic information!!! Thank you. 🎼

Great presentation! 🙂Also, Music is a Time Map, but with the idea of Attractors and Repulsors, and even Orbits of Meaning applied to the relationships.

Fascinating and very well shown and explained, as always. Thank You Mike, I’m sure it will prove useful as I continue to learn more stuff bit by bit. I’m in my 60s now but more interested than ever in theory as I realise (late on) how important to playing it is.

Hello Mike! I’m a simple musician that has a bit of experience in music and theory. I don’t really get the utility of organizing the harmony like that. If the circle of 5th is symmetric, it’s clear that you can create multiples of this symmetry. It is just math 🤷🏽‍♂️ . I’m 100% convinced that this scheme is just a result of a nerdy guy that was John Coltrane. Even Miles Davis “complained” about this overthinking of Coltrane. He stopped doing his games after that indeed. Everything that is organized in that scheme derives from the harmonization of the major scales. If we talk about triads in the major scale, we have 3 major, 3 minor and 1 diminished. We have 12 keys. Of course there are common chords. For example: Em is the second degree of D major, but also the 3rd of C major, but also the 6th of G major. You can use this common chords as pivots to move in different keys. I don’t think this scheme is what gives greatness to John Coltrane, this is just a stupid game. Coltrane is the sound, the pain of his times, his spirituality, his religiosity, his feelings but also his technique of course. I love him with all my heart, I read about him I learned his solos and I don’t think he would be happy if we underline this theoretical and very small part of his studies. This is something that everyone, with just a little sense of logic, can organize. Even The Coltrane changes are not his creation. It is just the B of “Have you met miss jones” written in 1937, 20 years earlier. He developed this major thirds interval of course, but everything was already there since years. J.S. Bach already organize the music 200 years that the boppers were playing in the 50’. What I’m trying to say is that the avant-garde is in the feelings and not in the constant search for the “new” in a finite world like musical harmony. Jazz is classical music with the african approach. Music is one. We are playing 12 semitones since 750 years. What we want to demonstrate more? Everything was already said. Let’s just enjoy it 😊

Nice explanation. Though, the lines which represent the diameter of the circle represent tritone relationships relative to the root or tonal fundamental and the number of chromatic intervals required to return to the originating tonal fundamental or key, in this case C. So from C to Gb it requires 7 chromatic intervals, with C being 1 and Gb being 7. Or, C# being the 2nd chromatic intervale relative to G, with 6 chromatic intervals required to return to C from G, and so on, observing the number relationships written along the lines which are diameters of the circle. Also, the innner circle and the outer circle, if you follow the circles between the major tetrachords that connect the inner and outer circles of whole-step intervals, they produce either major scales if starting on the outer circle and following the incirculations to the inner circle between the major tetrachords, and produce a natural melodic minor scale if following the innner circle to the outer circle via the incirculations between the major tretrachords from the inner circle to the outer circle. If you follow the incirculations twice, for example starting on C, you get a bebop dominant scale - C D E F G A Bb B. This diagram also demonstrates, via the doubling of frequencies at the octaves, that note selections a certain number of octaves away from the tonal fundamental become more complex and various, since the doubling in frequency of waves in terms of sound as a physical longitudinal pressure wave in air, means that the troughs of the wave forms align differently in physical space depending on the octave relationship. You could argue that temper tuning invalidates this theorem, expect you must keep in mind an instrument like the saxophone can adjust for the semitone differences and produce a just or perfect tuning relative to the instruments like the piano which cannot adjust for pitch. FYI.

This is amazing. Great explanation. Really cool.

I totally love the addition of colour however I see the notes in different colours so it always throws me off A is red to me C is yellow

Just the type of things that I find fascinating. I noticed some correlation with the Barry Harris perspective where if you have a C whole tone (6 notes) and C# whole tone (6 notes) then you have the entire chromatic scale (12) which produces 6 tri-tones, 4 triads and 3 dim 7th chords and out of these dim chords the shifting of one of the notes produces dominant 7's that are related. Thank again and I hope this helps to decipher the "bowl of spaghetti" that somebody mentioned in one of the questions... Cheers.

Thank you so much Mike!

Hi, Mike! Steve Evans from Winnipeg, here. Have you explored Set Theory at all? I feel like it would resonate with you, given your geometric/mathematical interest in music.

Complex diagram well explained. So how about a Coltrane song breakdown using his circle?

Hey Mike imma need you to put a little more respect on Coltranes name sir. He was a legend…. And a musical prophet

84-60=24 (3 octaves)

Think about aspects in astrology. Fine tuning within 360°.

King David said to have a Hexagram in his birth chart. Solomon, a Pentacle. 72° between each point in the pentacle. Perhaps I'll study music theory also. But, does anyone know of 72 collerations within music?

Very interesting coverage of the inner spirit of musical genius..."Cool...🧊🧊

"fractal, self referencial"...... I'm 14 and that's deep 😂

Do you think that JC "wrote" that tune having all these in mind?

84-60=14

Musical notes could thus be found within astrological birth charts 😊

Did Coltrane precede the Circle of Fifths?

Stop with the mic bs . Man stop...! You are the only one that I've ever dealt with nail scrapeing sound..WOW...!

Well dude the devil mastered this pattern So yes it is ancient hydrological language...