This article will briefly explain what the circle of 4ths and 5ths is and how you can use it as a guitar player. The circle of 4ths and 5ths is a way of showing the relationship between the 12 notes or keys of the chromatic scale. Depending on the diagram it may contain information about how many #'s and b's there are in each key signature and relative minor keys for each major key.
If you look at the circle (see the diagram below) and follow the note names around clock-wise, you'll find each note a perfect 5th along from the last one (7 frets on the guitar). C, G, D, A, E, B, Gb/F#, Db, Ab, Eb, Bb, F. The perfect 5th is the most consonant interval that isn't an octave (it sounds the best) and it can be considered the essential DNA of Western music.
If you follow the notes around the circle in the counter-clock direction C, F, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb/F#, B, E, A, D, G you'll reach each next note by moving a perfect 4th along (5 frets on the guitar).
So how is it useful as a guitar player? Well it can help you with figuring out songs by ear, help you with your song-writing, help you transpose songs into different songs, find relative minor keys and a lot more things. It's an incredibly elegant geometric representation of music and is an incredibly useful tool.
Here's an example of one of the things you can do with it. Looking at the diagram picky any of the letters. For example C, imagine you have a song in the key or C and want to find out what its relative minor key is so that you can spice up a song you are writing or so that you can play a solo that incorporates the C Major scale and its relative minor scale.
To find the relative minor you draw a line down from the C to the centre of the circle, then draw a line at a right-angle to the first one on the right hand side. It will point straight at the A. This means that A minor is the relative minor key of C Major. You can do this for any of the other keys, for example the relative minor key of G Major is E minor. That's just one of the many things you can find out with the circle of 4ths and 5ths.
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