What's better than one Cycle of fifths?

Two Cycles of Fifths, silly.

Many moons ago I was waffling about the cycle of 4ths as I was want to do and a great man called Jason Morris (sadly gone) mentioned he preferred the cycle of alternating minor and major thirds.

Needless to say it drew a blank with me at the time and I dismissed it as the ramblings of a deranged person who liked the Harmonic Minor more than the Melodic Minor.

Then I watch a Larry Carlton video where he makes much of the alternating major and minor stuff

How wrong I was to discount Jason's great advice.

It hit me today what he meant. I've been looking for a way to learn stuff in all keys without getting sucked into systemizing it. Have you done that? Someone says learn all the notes playing find a note on the guitar and you end up not being fully random and using the same interval (the trick with this lesson I recently learnt from the great Seth Govan (clang), is to randomise the randomisation - use intervals and note names in "find-a-note" so first find all the As till the 12 fret now find all the notes a 3rd above ... now all the Fs now all the notes a tritone off - see how that breaks it up? Marvellous - thanks Seth :^).. but I digress my old approach to randomisation dragged up more system, and that's what I'm sharing today (alhough the real value of this post is probably Seth's advice).

I've gone to great lengths with this, firstly learning patterns starting from the high E so I go through all the distortions of a pattern (around the B string) before getting into the smooth waters of patterns starting on E or A. (note to self - show them the fretboard diagrams in the coloured note-book for this)

But when I stop learning the same key all over the place what's the next key I should check out? Cycle of 5th or Cycle of 4ths simply sees me mentally transposing across strings and I'm back learning a pattern again... which I'm keen to avoid.(Note to self this needs a diagram to support it)

Since a minor third + major third is a perfect 5th the transposition is disrupted (for now) as I can learn the keys for the current exercise thusly:

C Eb G Bb D F A C E G B D F# A C# E G# B D#

which has some dupes in it, well anyway it helps me for now and I was startled how a chance comment several years ago came back.

Before Seth's approach made this a redundant solution, I'd already decided to apply it to chords, chords and cycles of fifths are so much fun together, look... C major 7 as you've never needed to see it before, woo!

This diagram makes it much easier to see what I'm saying, I put two cycle of fifths side by side offset to render either a major or minor chord of my choice.

In the above diagram, any chord where the root is in black will be major

In this above diagram, any chord where the root is in black will be minor

After marvelling at my facile genius and ability to play with characters rather than practice bass, guitar, rewire my strat, fix my jen wah, sell a load of surplus gear on ebay or repair my lovely Fender twin... I realised you only need one of the above diagrams... let's say the top one is the standard.

If I'm totally honest, the thing I'm most proud of is the name