The Cycle in Tunes – #3 of 5

by Ari • 23 Sep 2015 — 2 minute read

The Cycle in Tunes

My favorite reason for knowing the cycle is that it shows up in music everywhere, so if you recognize it (and its variations) you have a distinct leg up learning and understanding tunes. The Circle of Fifths (ascending fifths or descending fourths) – bits of it or the whole of it within a key – these sounds and progressions are everywhere!

By the way, what’s the classical theorists prefer the word Circle, the Jazzers call it Cycle. Miss Carol Kaye told me in person.

In this video I present what’s called the Diatonic Cycle. And once you can spot it you are spotting just about half of all chord movements or so in a lot of popular styles of music such as pop, jazz, rock. Or maybe three quarters! Here is a disco sample to warm up with…

[Tweet “Understand the diatonic cycle, spot common chord progressions! Addictive jam track!“]

VIDEO 3 Cycle AC

This video is part of a five-segment promotional mini-series I created in June 2015 for the online-education powerhouse TrueFire. Get my Truefire Course Pentatonic Playground for Bass here

For systematic and comprehensive bass learning check out my course
Thanks for watching!

This was “The Cycle in Music” – # 3 of the 5-part series

If you missed it so far…

1 – The Cycle of Fifths for the Bass Player (1 of 5)

2 – The Cycle for Fretboard Fitness (2 of 5)

Stay tuned for Part 4!

My Gear:

I use Marleaux Basses and Dean Markley Strings.
TC Electronics Pedals, cabs and amps
Fretwrap by Gruvgear.

(Ariane Cap is an official endorser for all these fine companies.)

Thanks to Wolftrackaudio.com for audio post production.

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Groove enthusiast and learning nerd.

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Hi. I'm Ari.

As a bassist, I have toured/played/recorded with a variety of rock, Jazz, and funk bands, I have worked with some incredible producers (Keith Olsen) and musicians (Paul Hanson, Muriel Anderson) and I toured Brazil with Stu Hamm as a duo.

As a bass teacher, I have taught at London Bass Day, Gerald Veasley’s Bass Boot Camp, SBL, Truefire, notreble… I even ran my own music school for a few years before gigs took me back on the road.

One thing to know about me is that I teach because I am absolutely fascinated with the learning process. And I am obsessed with helping others realize their musical potential.

When I started playing bass, I excelled very quickly because I had an amazing teacher who taught me using a powerful method. This method transformed my playing so quickly that I passed a bunch of high-level university auditions and even tested out of entire classes at university even though I had been playing for only a very short time.

That’s what, many years later turned into one of my books, co-written with Wolf Wein, called “The Pattern System for the Bass Player”. I created entire systems of learning based on some of these ideas and wrote books and created courses together with Wolf. Our bass books have sold over 30,000 copies and garnered rave reviews.

I started teaching online in 2009 and have embraced technology as a powerful learning tool since then, never losing sight of the importance of providing feedback and personalized guidance to learners.

Read more…

The Cycle in Tunes – #3 of 5