Michael Angelo Batio teaches the circle of fifths for guitar players

Michael Angelo Batio
(Image credit: YouTube / Sweetwater)

You may know of Michael Angelo Batio as a high octane shredder on anything up to a four-neck electric guitar, and soon-to-be Manowar guitarist, but he's also an excellent guitar teacher for players of all levels, and recently stopped by Sweetwater to introduce the relationships between chords with the circle of fifths with a video lesson.

It's a good starter for beginner players too. The circle of fifths is often shown in the diagram of a circle that you can see below. 

Circle of fifths

(Image credit: Future)

Going around the circle clockwise, each note or key is separated by an interval of a perfect 5th. The circle groups together all the 12 major keys with their relative minors. A relative key is simply defined as the minor key that uses the same notes as a particular major key, or a major key that uses the same notes as a particular minor key. 

Michael Angelo Batio illustrates it in the video above, and to find out more check out our circle of fifths overview. 

Check out the tutorial book Guitar Solo 2.0 Michael's lesson is based on at Sweetwater

Michael Angelo Batio's top 5 tips for guitarists

Rob Laing
Guitars Editor, MusicRadar

I'm the Guitars Editor for MusicRadar, handling news, reviews, features, tuition, advice for the strings side of the site and everything in between. Before MusicRadar I worked on guitar magazines for 15 years, including Editor of Total Guitar in the UK. When I'm not rejigging pedalboards I'm usually thinking about rejigging pedalboards.