If you go up a perfect fifth (clockwise in the circle), you get the key that has one more sharp or one less flat if you go down a perfect fifth (counterclockwise), you get the key that has one more flat or one less sharp. The circle of fifths gets its name from the fact that as you go from one section of the circle to the next, you are going up or down by an interval of a perfect fifth. The keys that are most distant from C major, with six sharps or six flats, are on the opposite side of the circle.

The next most closely related keys to C major would be G major (or E minor), with one sharp, and F major (or D minor), with only one flat.

This puts them in the same 'slice' of the circle. So the most closely related key to C major, for example, is A minor, since they have the same key signature (no sharps and no flats). What makes two keys 'closely related' is having similar key signatures. Keys are not considered closely related to each other if they are near each other in the chromatic scale (or on a keyboard). In theory, one could continue around the circle adding flats or sharps (so that B major is also C flat major, with seven flats, E major is also F flat major, with 6 flats and a double flat, and so on), but in practice such key signatures are very rare. I've found the MacBook Pro Keyboard - How to Swap / Remap Keys? to contain useful information on this subject.The major key for each key signature is shown as a capital letter the minor key as a small letter. DoubleCommand is a quick and easy way to fix this if you use a PC keyboard with your Mac. Often used to make a PC keyboard more comfortable with a Mac, swapping the Alt (Option) and Windows (Command or Apple) keys, since they are in swapped positions on Mac and PC keyboards. you can’t have Q and Z swap places because the remapping code would get confusedĭoubleCommand is software for Mac OS X (a kernel extension) that lets you remap keys, in other words change the way your keyboard works. you could remap Caps Lock to a Shift keyĪllow you to swap two keys with each other - e.g. Map an entire key to any other key - e.g. Included in the application is a list of common keyboard keys and a Type Key feature to automatically recognize most keyboard keys. SharpKeys is a utility that manages a Registry key that allows Windows to remap one key to any other key.

Sharp keys