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this mister Eric Patrick Clapton is one of the greatest guitar player. a solo artist, and was a member of the Yardbirds and Cream. what i really know about him isn’t much, but it’s more than enough for me to acknowledge his achievements. his ability in guitar playing and song writing has inspired a lot of people beyond his generation.

for the very first time i heard his voice through his song “wonderful tonight”, i was a 12 years old kid, knew nothing about anything but that song lasts on my mind. it’s like an introduction to mature and stylish love, a decent young gentleman who loves his gorgeous girl with all his nerve and adoration. it has catchy blues guitar licks which made any guitarists want to try it. for me, “Wonderful Tonight” is like a guidance to prom party which will help any young man to get his girl in stylish and decent way.

next song which came to my ears is “tears in heaven” when i was in senior high school back then, just few months afer i got my first acoustic guitar. again, i knew nothing about this song until i learnt to play it. what a grieve feeling that shocked my heart when i read and sang the lyrics at that time. “this guy is crazy. he could kill people with his songs”. i continued learning guitar after that moment, forgetting about Eric Clapton, expanding my guitar learning, licks, arpeggios, distortions and whatsoever stuff, yet i will not forget that grieve feeling i experienced just only by listening “Tears In Heaven“.

next moment was when my friend shared videoclip, eric clapton’s live performing “i shot he sherrif”. yes it is bob marley’s song, but eric clapton’s version brought blues idealism and reggae freedom idea into one clean liveshow. this video tickles me and i start to find anything about eric clapton. his Cream band, a power trio with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and “arty, blues-based psychedelic pop (quoted from wikipedia, what a quote) is one fine blues. my blues learning was ignited by this guy and i love blues since then.

Martin 000-28

Eric Clapton uses many guitars, and Fender Eric Clapton Stratocaster® Electric Guitar and Martin 00028EC Eric Clapton Model Acoustic Guitarare the best you can get from the store nowadays. And you might want to read article about how he love his guitars here at dailymail.co.uk news. it’s amazing story when you heard someone donates his guitars for charity.

as a guitar learner, Eric Clapton has my respect. his playing and songs have been accompanying and teaching me lots of things. at least 3 minutes talk or a picture of me and him shaking hands would be a life time memorable moment. but actually, i want to meet Eric Clapton and have my first electric guitar scratched with knife by him.

well, indeed it’s easier for us to understand the circle of fifth than the circle of fourths in guitar learning. There are two reason for this. first, we can always find the fifth note on the guitar fret board, simply by pick the string right above the root note (for the root note on the 3th, 4th, 5th string and the 1st string, the fifth note is right above it; for the 2nd string, the fifth note is half-note-down above).  it’s visually known by our eyes and our fingers can touch it right away.the second reason and the real reason is that the circle of fifth is obtained from the notes order linearly. there is something that we called tetrachord. the wikipedia definition:

a tetrachord is a series of three smaller intervals that span the interval of a perfect fourth, a 4:3 frequency proportion.

the circle of fifth is obtained from diatonic tetrachord (this is sh!t, there are too many difficult words for beginner guitarist like me to understand!). I’ll try to explain what is in my mind and let pictures redefine all these.

let’s divide an octave into 2 parts,
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1  into 1 2 3 4 and 5 6 7 1
put them on a paper and write down the note intervals

now we have separated and identical intervals, 1 2 3 4 = w-w-h and 5 6 7 1= w-w-h

put the alphabet notes, then we have C D E F and G A B C plus the intervals.
the rest is easy. pay attention to the fifth note and observe how each fifth note is transferred onto the first(root) note. there you can see the number of sharped notes in each transferred note. here is the complete picture.

from that picture above, we can make a circle of notes called ” the circle of fifths”
here i share picture of it from wikipedia

please, correct me if i shared the wrong information via your comments. your feedback is my teacher. thanks