Don’t Be a Prompter — Be a Composer

How FifthSense Ethics© and the Circle of Fifths Unlock a New Language for AI Fluency

10 min readJun 15, 2025

This article serves as the priority date for the claim of Copyright for the phrase “FifthSense Ethics©”, dated June 15, 2025, Sydney Australia

There’s a Hidden Harmony in the AI Century

For decades, we’ve designed our future around the illusion of control. We build systems, craft frameworks, and chase efficiencies — hoping to contain the rising tide of intelligent machines. My earlier work, MAARR (Machine–Agent–Alignment–Relational–Responsibility), was born from this impulse. MAARR is a rigorous scaffolding to ensure human sovereignty in the age of Agentic AI.

But something was missing. The blueprints were solid, the logic sound — yet the spirit felt elusive. I was optimising for function, but what about feeling? What about attunement? What about the ineffable quality of human perception that gives life meaning, presence, and purpose?

Then I posed a deeply insightful question, not a thought-bubble but a rupture in the frame: What if the Circle of Fifths was designed for the AI Century?

That single inquiry cracked open a new way of seeing — and from it, the FifthSense Ethics harmonic mindset was born.

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the FifthSense Ethics harmonic mindset was born by a composer’s mindset, article by Greg Twemlow

From Scaffolding to Symphony: The Evolution of MAARR

The Circle of Fifths, a centuries-old structure at the core of musical harmony, offers a profound shift in how we approach AI. It’s cyclical, not linear. Asynchronous, not synchronous. Harmonically coherent, not hierarchically controlled. In music, we don’t control — we attune. We don’t dominate — we listen. We don’t program — we compose.

This distinction matters more than ever. Because today, the greatest revolution in AI isn’t its capability — it’s the potential for asynchronicity.

We traverse life, from school to work to bureaucracy, forcing us into synchronised schedules. We learn in lockstep, attend meetings we’re not ready for, and respond to decisions before we’ve had time to think. But AI, when aligned properly, breaks the synchronicity pattern. It restores the right to learn, think, and act on our personal rhythm.

This is the overlooked superpower of this harmonic mindset: it enables asynchronous alignment. It allows each human to enter dialogue the moment they’re ready, not when the calendar says so. It’s much more than a convenience; it’s a cognitive liberation.

It will take your focused effort to comprehend how radical this is. Because for centuries, our systems have mistaken synchronisation for efficiency. But our mind doesn’t work that way. Creativity isn’t linear. Insight doesn’t follow a clock. This framework restores us to the cadence of our cognition.

My MAARR architecture and the FifthSense Ethics mindset provide the architectural beams. This mindset tunes the resonance.

Structure Meets Soul: Rethinking Proficiency

Recent data confirms the urgency of this approach. While AI adoption is surging, proficiency is alarmingly low. Only 10% of the workforce is AI-proficient. Most people use it like a search engine, with little understanding of how to frame a thought, ask a meaningful question, or iterate through a complex insight.

In the rush to deploy AI, companies have mistaken access for mastery. The truth? People don’t need more models — they need more meaning.

They need an orientation, not just tools. This doesn’t just upskill — it awakens a deeper faculty: discernment.

This is where structure and soul converge. Consider MAARR’s five pillars — Memory, Alignment, Agency, Reasoning, and Reflection. Through this mindset, these aren’t just functions, they’re frequencies. A living system.

An ethical rhythm and a way to tune your cognition while interacting with agentic systems.

And here’s the key: you’re composing asynchronously. You don’t have to activate all five elements at once. You return to memory when it calls you. You align when the moment demands clarity. You reflect not because a clock says so, but because something in you shifts.

That’s the real revolution — AI systems that support cognition on human time, not system time.

The Bridge Between Framework and Feeling

This framework is the mindset. It’s the bridge that connects MAARR’s structure to lived experience.

MAARR gives us the beams: the core components of responsible AI interaction. But without a way to feel them, they risk becoming abstract.

The mindset guides you to experience these principles like a musician composing with the Circle of Fifths. Not in theory, but in flow. It turns prompts into progressions and outputs into orchestrations. It enables people, regardless of age, to approach AI absent apprehension, and with attunement.

And like any great bridge, it invites you to cross from knowing into becoming.

Mathematics and Creativity: The Hidden Harmony of Thought

This isn’t a new polarity. It echoes a truth known to history’s greatest minds: mathematics and creativity are not opposites, but mirrors. The Circle of Fifths is both a harmonic guide and a mathematical graph. Its structure is elegant. Its application is poetic.

Mathematics and Creativity are the Hidden Harmony of Thought, article by Greg Twemlow

Musicians use the Circle of Fifths as a map for navigating tonal relationships. It shows how keys relate harmonically and enables smooth transitions across distant sounds. It supports improvisation and deep structure — composing in one key while anticipating the emotional lift or tension of moving into another. Crucially, it’s a tool of asynchronous creativity: a musician may sketch a motif today, layer a harmony tomorrow, and resolve a cadence next week. The Circle holds that structure across time.

In this way, it isn’t just a guide — it’s a reference for musical quality. It helps identify what resonates, what clashes, and where to listen for coherence or dissonance, and it’s the model that inspired this framework: a dynamic reference system that supports creative evolution, not just control.

FifthSense Ethics mindset reclaims that unity. It speaks in the language of order and feeling. It treats insight as a composition, not a conclusion. And it sees AI as a black box oracle — but more importantly, as a collaborator in a shared improvisation.

The Bridge to MAARR: Why This Framework Works for Every Generation

What unlocks the essence of AI’s power is not raw intelligence — it’s structured imagination where mathematics, creativity, and the FifthSense mindset converge.

Mathematics provides the skeleton of all AI systems — underlying everything from token prediction to vector reasoning. But to humans, it’s also about symmetry, rhythm, and patterns we can feel.

Creativity is the access point for human meaning. It lets us explore without a map, remix the expected, and arrive at truths that no equation could predict.

Your FifthSense mindset is the interpreter between them. It acts as a harmonic tuner that lets users feel when something is in ethical alignment. It’s a scaffold that teaches MAARR as a living ethic of intelligent composition.

The mathematics-creativity-mindset combination — structured math, creative intuition, and perceptual alignment — is how we teach discernment across all ages. Whether someone is 14 or 74, they’ll feel harmony before they can explain it. They can sense ethical alignment before they can model it.

It’s not just how we teach MAARR. It’s how we make it matter.

FifthSense Ethics: A Tuning Fork for the Listening Age

I chose to use the phrase FifthSense Ethics, not to imply a protocol or policy, but an applied framework for human-AI harmony.

Using this new paradigm, you step into a different model of engagement.

You won’t encounter a rigid system, but a dynamic studio. Nothing prescriptive, just a guiding posture — a way of collaborating with AI that prioritises listening, discernment, and co-creative ethics.

You’re not here for answers — you’re here for resonance.

Becoming the Composer of Your Future

The future isn’t programmed. It’s composed.

You don’t need to master every instrument. You do need to set the key, choose the tempo, and define what counts as beautiful.

This framework is my commitment to helping humans become composers of their time, values, tools, and impact.

It enables a future where AI doesn’t drown us in output but invites us to pause, attune, and reimagine what progress could sound like.

Welcome to the Listening Age. Welcome to FifthSense Ethics

This is more than a framework. It’s a reminder: when you tune into what matters, even a machine can hum in harmony with your soul.

You’re Not Prompting — You’re Composing

A Harmonic Metaphor for Working with AI

FifthSense is more than a framework. It’s a harmonic metaphor for how humans can work with AI.

Musicians don’t just play notes. They compose — layering decisions over time, guided by memory, structure, emotion, and intentional risk.

They begin with a key — a tonal centre that sets direction. Then they explore, move through tension, resolve, and return.

They don’t rush. They listen and then revise.

This is what meaningful AI interaction looks like.

When you work with AI through this mindset, you’re not prompting like you would a search engine.

You’re composing an ethical, aligned, and evolving performance of thought — not a monologue, but a symphony. Each prompt is a note, each insight a chord. Together, they create a movement guided by feeling and structure, intention and intuition.

Each part of MAARR plays its role, like notes in a jazz ensemble — improvised, responsive, yet grounded in structure. Just as a skilled musician listens while playing, adjusting their tone to harmonise with the group, an AI composer uses Memory, Alignment, Agency, Reasoning, and Reflection to stay attuned to the evolving composition. This isn’t automation. It’s improvisation with integrity.:

Memory — Maria begins by gathering community insights and personal experience. These become her evolving themes.
Alignment — She sets her intent: creating something that resonates with her students’ lived reality. This becomes her key.
Agency — As the ideas unfold, she takes bold leaps — reframing, redirecting, pivoting from literal to metaphor.
Reasoning — She applies logic to her structure, ensuring each element has integrity and coherence.
Reflection — Finally, she reviews the emotional tone, tunes the arc of the session, and ensures it lands with clarity.

That’s a full composition. It didn’t happen in one burst. It unfolded asynchronously — like a musician sketching by feel, not formula.

And next time you “compose” with AI — when your words start to flow, ideas build on ideas, when it all clicks — pause.

Stand up from your desk.

Feel the quiet rush musicians feel when a new chord progression sings back at them through the Circle of Fifths.

That’s what harmony feels like. That’s the future you’re building — one symphony at a time.

Appendix: Composing with AI — A Real Example

What It Feels Like to Compose, Not Prompt

Maria isn’t an AI specialist. She’s a school principal seeking ideas to develop a new community mentoring program.

Instead of asking ChatGPT to “generate a proposal,” she approaches it like a composer would sketch a melody — through layered exploration and attuned improvisation.

Just like a musician scanning the Circle of Fifths for a key to begin, she starts with a tonal question:

“Let’s define what community mentoring looks like.”

That’s her C major — a grounded, familiar place to begin.

She builds chord progressions with each follow-up:

“How does mentoring feel for a member of our community?” → A shift to G major, adding uplift.

“What might the workshop structure be — timing, format, flow?” → Moving to D major, planning structure.

“Should this workshop serve mentors, mentees, or both?” → This adds an expressive A minor, a question of nuance.

Then a modulation:

“Can we build a metaphor that helps Year 12s grasp this shift? Maybe something like crossing a bridge?” → A conceptual pivot, echoing F major, broadening emotional resonance.

Finally:

“Let’s now reframe all of this into a workshop outline using the MAARR model.”

That’s her return to C major — a full circle, but transformed.

Maria’s journey echoes MAARR’s five principles:

Memory: She draws on lived community insights.
Alignment: She checks for resonance with her values.
Agency: She steers the session, not the AI.
Reasoning: She builds logic across each element.
Reflection: She tunes the emotional and educational arc of the experience.

She didn’t prompt. She composed. That’s FifthSense Ethics — alive in action — guiding the creation of a new community mentoring program.

Instead of asking ChatGPT to “generate a proposal,” she approaches it like a composer would sketch a melody — through layered exploration and attuned improvisation.

Want to Explore the Circle of Fifths and Discover Your Musical Creativity?

Learn more about the musical foundation that inspired this framework using the websites below: