We NEED to talk about triads!

[Sascha Franck]

So, do we really need to? We shall see.

Note: This first post and possibly the next 1-2 as well will be a bit longer because I need to get some stuff outta the way. I hope that most further posts will be more of a "hands on" kinda style.

For myself, when it comes to anything chord related, triads have got to be *the* most important things I ever tried to explore. In this thread, I'll be trying to share some of the "whys" and "hows".

Forgive me in case some things aren't instantly clear, so far I have only ever taught this in one-on-one situations and/or in german.

Also, please note that this will be a "triads a la Mr. Franck" thread, so I won't even try to cover all aspects of whatever they might be. Exploring all options will possibly exceed a guitar player's lifespan. And you may as well find some interesting other applications elsewhere, which is great.

---

Ok, so why triads? Here's some more or less unsorted reasons:

- If anything, the major scale harmonized using triad based chords has got to be the foundation of pretty much all western music (which is why I will also try to cover some scale/tonality/chord relationships as I go along). Yes, there's 7th-chords, there's extended chords, then there's also other scales and what not. There's also eastern, african and maybe martian music, possibly all not using triads. And still, in case you were born and raised "somewhere in the western culture", the children's songs your mother sang to you back when you were shitting your diapers in a cradle very likely used a lot of major scale stuff and triad harmonization.

- Triads are great for guitar players for some reasons.
They can be played in "close position" (so basically all the contained notes are as close to each other as possible), including all inversions (I'll get to that later) which is hardly possible with 4-part voicings (as for example used for 7th chords).
In case you don't double any notes, the maximum amount of fingers needed is three (sometimes even less), which always leaves us with at least one free finger that can be used for "stuff".
Triads can be played pretty much all across the fingerboard, which allows them to be fit in a lot of musical context without clashing into other instrument's frequency ranges (as in, say, being able to play them below or above thick keyboard voicings).
Sort of obvious, but triads also allow for a lot of playing techniques. They can more or less easily be strummed (given you can mute the unused strings), they can be arpeggiated easily, they can be played finger style or pick and finger style.

- In a lot of contexts, triads can become more than triads. They can become 7th chords once an additional bass is present. Or they can become quite something else. C/A is Amin7. C/D is D7/9sus4. Etc. And you would still only have to play that simple C major triad. Isn't that just great? I will hopefully explain some of these "derivates" later on.

- Not exactly important, but still: Triads are the minimum requirement for something to be called a "chord". Yes, I was arguing with some folks that certain "dyads" (just two different notes instead of the three used in a triad) were sufficient to describe certain musical contexts - but I got taught they can't be called "chords" and finally accepted it. No need to discuss much about it, dyads are still useful often, but they're not subject of this thread.

- They're great to learn and internalize some bits about intervals (a recent thread that went somewhat out of hand was the reason for me to finally start this thread - but I have always thought I could do that anyway).

---

In the next few postings, I'll try to show how (typical) triads are built and get into some ways of actually playing them. I'll also try to show how to combine them and how to possibly and actually have some fun doing so.

Requirements: Being able to find notes on each string. No need to be super fast with it at all, plus I'm sure many things will fall into place after a while. In fact, I think learning some triad based stuff may even help to become faster with that.

Some notes:

- I will write some things as if they were a given. Which they often may as well not be. But I'd really like to get into the actual playing aspect pretty quickly, so I'd like to not concentrate much on whatever possible explanations and implications.

- I will describe some things based on some theory "rules". And while I might explain some of them briefly, I may as well not do that very thoroughly for now, the reason being that any kind of theory debates can become very longwinded. Again: Ideally all this should become a "hands on" thing rather than a theory discussion.

- Excuse me in case I'm as well explaining some things that might be very, very obvious to some folks. Just skip them in case you're aware of them already (or skip the entire thread).

- Along these lines, if anything, I hope that this will result in some folks to possibly get their hands dirty and go for some DIY.

- This is *not* about shredding. This is also not about covering your favourite player or learning existing songs. It's all about a tool allowing you (!) to actually make (!) music with.

- The first examples will possibly be pretty lame-ish. But that might change quickly.

One last thing: PLEASE do not try your best to derail this thread. It's fine to ask questions, it's also fine to call out factual mistakes, but I would really ask anyone not to come up with all kinda possible "but you could as well do it that way"s or "but that dude is doing it this way"s. I said so above already, this is not the only, not a universal and not even an all too broadbanded approach. It's just about trying to share a part of some things I found to be extremely useful in my life as a guitarist.

Ouch, that was an awful lot for a thread opening...

Edited to add the relevant content postings, so people coming later could get through things easier:
What are triads
Building and playing A major triad and its inversions
Building a D major triad, playing it in a progression with the A triad
Building an E major triad, playing it in a progression with the A triad
Putting some things together, I-IV-V-I progressin in A major
Introducing major triads on all sets of strings, playing the same chord progression all over the neck

 

[Mikael Dez]

This is excellent and I look forward to what this thread will end up teaching me.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Ok. What are triads (no, this is not the be-all-end-all definition)?
Basically, it's a group of three different notes played together (yes, you can as well play them as arpeggios) so they form a chord.

Possibly the most common application would be to take a key (or a given scale, whatever...) and build up triads on each note. This is not done random style but you take one note as your root and slap two diatonic thirds on top of it. When done, one may (or should/would?) analyze the resulting triad chord.

Diatonic: Staying within a given key/scale.

Third: The interval (distance between two notes) resulting when you take one note of a key/scale, skip the next and land on the one after that.
Without covering some esoteric situations, there's two kinds of thirds, the minor and the major third. A minor third covers the distance of 3 semitones, a major third covers 4 semitones.

Example: The C major scale goes C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C.
When we build a triad on the very first note, namely the C, that'll become our root, we will then skip the D and land on the E. And as we want this to become a triad, we will repeat the process starting at the E, hence skip the F and land on the G. So we end up with a C-E-G construct. That's our C triad.

The following analysis would reveal that the E is a major third apart from our root note C. Which would as well make it a major chord (a minor third would make it a minor chord, we will later on actually listen to the differences between the two by comparing them directly). The G, which we will also put into relation to our root note (that's the way chords are analyzed) is a (also called perfect) fifth apart (equaling 7 semitones), which can be considered an "obvious" note (as in not mentioned/indexed in the chord symbol, but it's also almost harmonically obvious as it's very present in the overtone series of the root note C).
The final result would hence be a C major triad.

The same procedure can now be performed for each of the 7 notes in our C major key/scale. Goes as follows (feel free to reproduce on your instrument, but you can as well just believe me for now).

C - root
E - major third
G - fifth
-> C (major - which is not indexed in a chord symbol, just as the perfect fifth isn't)

D - root
F - minor third
A - fifth
-> Dmin (the minor character *needs* indexing in a chord symbol!)

E - root
G - minor third
B - fifth
-> Emin

F - root
A - major third
C - fifth
-> F

G - root
B - major third
D - fifth
-> G

A - root
C - minor third
E - fifth
-> Amin

B - root
D - minor third
F - flat(tened), diminished fifth
-> Bdim or Bminb5 (any non-perfect fifth *needs* to be mentioned in the chord symbol)

Unfortunately, that very last chord is a bit of a weird thing to happen. Once you count the semitones from root to the second third we slapped on top, you will find out that it's just 6 instead of 7 semitones - so it's not a perfect fifth anymore but a diminished (aka "dim") 5th. Now, not only does it sound kinda "unstable" on its own (which we may as well explore later on), the naming isn't exactly in line with the others, either. The most common naming might be Fdim, but once we get to 7th (hence 4-part) chords, you will often find Fmin7/b5, so it might as well just be called Fminb5 as a triad.
Yes, this might result in some confusion, but we can fortunately kinda skip that chord for the time being.

Alright, now that we've listed and analyzed all 7 triad chords of a major scale, we could sort of formularize it. In kinda "modern" music analysis, it's very common to use capital roman numbers for scale degrees. The resulting formula would hence look like this:

I
IImin
IIImin
IV
V
VImin
VIIdim


For now, that's all the boring stuff we need to know to start playing. Which I will finally get into with the next posting.

 

[Sascha Franck]

So, before we actually get to some playing, we need to do some abstraction. The reason being, that I'd like to use the key of A major for the first playing bits. That's because we can then easily use the open A string to put things into context easier.
But it's also a good drill to deviate from C major, which has got to be *the* most common key for any theoretical explanations - even so much that people are having a hard time navigating inside other keys. But it should be as easy. So why not get used to it already?

Without getting into any circle of fifths adventures, any deeper scale formula expeditions or whatever (things you'll find explained just around any corner of the internet anyway), here's the notes of the A major scale:

A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G#, A

Then, using the formula of the previous post, the triads in A major are:

A
Bmin
C#min
D
E
F#min
G#dim

That's all we need for now, time to finally play some stuff.

For (at least pretty much) all of the following examples, we will use the D, G and B strings to play our triads. The reason being that they can be played pretty easily and that (at least IMO) they will sound very "balanced" on that set of strings.

And we will start with a very, very easy thing, namely the A major triad.

Given the previous explanation, we will take the root a, skip one note, get the third, skip another note and get the fifth. The resulting triad will hence be A-C#-E.
I could now make this some kinda homework, but I'll rather not do so for now, so trying to play that in a comfortable position on our D, G and B strings, we will end up with this

x
5
6
7
x
x

Use whatever fingering you find appropriate, the most common thing possible being fingers 1, 2 and 3.
In case you're familiar with full barré chords, you will likely find that this is as well a part of the "E form" barré chord in 5th position (the same will be true for pretty much all triads, so we could as well get there by reducing full barré chords, but it's not as logical).

Ok, some more of that boring dry stuff (sorry, that was very little playing so far, but more to come very soon):
What we were playing here is called a triad in "root position". Root at the bottom, third and fifth following on top.

Now, you may have heard of "inversions" already. What are those? It's pretty much like throwing the same used notes together in other arrangements. Just that we will follow some rules/guidelines to do so. In close position (already mentioned in the first post, all contained notes as close to each other as possible), what we'll do is to simply shift the root up one octave. That'll result in our "first inversion".
Our triad A-C#-E will hence become C#-E-A. Using the same set of strings, it'd look like this:

x
10
9
11
x
x

Use whatever fingering you prefer (2, 1, 3 possibly being the most likely one).

Doing the same again (shifting the C# up an octave) will take us to our "second inversion", namely E-A-C#. Using the same set of strings it'd look like this:

x
14
14
14
x
x

You would likely use a mini barré for that.
And as we're pretty high on the neck already, we can shift everything down one octave (hence 12 frets) and end up with something that should be very familiar in the "A major chord universe":

x
2
2
2
x
x

And unless you're using an acoustic guitar with no cutaway, you could as well shift the root position triad up an octave.

x
17
18
19
x
x

Without even reaching for any other sets of strings, at least on an electric guitar /w cutaway this will already give you a pretty wide range of playing an A major chord. None of those will require any weird fingertwisting and once a little familiar with things, moving between them should be possible with ease.

So here's just one stupid little sound example:



Allright, this sounds pretty lame, doesn't it? (Excuse the backing already, wanted to get that off my chest as quick as possible...)
But I can almost promise that just taking the next step will pretty much up the game already.
Ok, even if some of that stuff was pre-written already, I need a little break now.

But here's a suggestion:
Figure out the same thing, hence all three triads (root position, 1st and 2nd inversion) and possible 12-fret shifts, for the D chord, following exactly the same principles as described above. Then play A and D in whatever positions (just stick with the D, G and B strings) and observe the movements carefully.
Moving flawlessy from one to another is possibly one of *the* most important things to do with triads.
I'll cover that in the next post, but DIY is always a great thing.

 

[Sascha Franck]

And fwiw, feel free to ask any questions, should you've really made it this far...

 

[Orvillain]

I have a question.

Why do we NEED to talk about this?

 

[Sascha Franck]

Why do we NEED to talk about this?

Because we do! You possibly NEED to ask JNC.

 

[duzie]

Please continue at your convenience @Sascha Franck

 

[joezlo]

The *ahem* most important triads of all triads is the Hello triad as performed by the Howards & Fine displayed below in this historical archival footage...


Originally known as a Major chord triad containing a root, major third, and perfect fifth, the name was changed to the Hello Triad after the King of Music was talking to a dove that landed on his shoulder and said, "Why I 'oughtta!" and the rest is history.

 

[FuzzyAce]

The *ahem* most important triads of all triads is the Hello triad as performed by the Howards & Fine displayed below in this historical archival footage...


Originally known as a Major chord triad containing a root, major third, and perfect fifth, the name was changed to the Hello Triad after the King of Music was talking to a dove that landed on his shoulder and said, "Why I 'oughtta!" and the rest is history.

That vid really encapsulates the nature of this forum.

 

[Sascha Franck]

As said in the last "content" posting, I would now like to explore one of the most relevant (and possibly both interesting and fun-supplying) things to do with triads, namely playing more than just one chord and moving between them pretty effortlessly and kind of "elegantly" (if you will).

I already recommended to check out the D major triad the same way I've shown using the A major triad.

You may ask "why D?"
The answer would be that inside a major tonality, there's basically three most essential chords, namely the ones built on the first, fourth and fifth degree of the scale. Which, in the case of A major, would be A, D and E. Indexed using roman numbers these would be the I, IV and V chords of the key. You may as well already have heard of them being called "tonic" (I), "subdominant" (IV) and "dominant" (V).
These three are the centerpiece of many traditional (and also quite some not so traditional) tunes. I'm sure most people are sort of familiar with that already, so I rather not get into that much deeper for now.

Just let me add a sort of personal note:
- The tonic chord is pretty much "home". Where we may start any journey or where we may end it.
- The subdominant chord is like starting to explore places somewhat away from home.
- The dominant chord possibly is even further away but may lend us to return home.

So, let's quickly build all three inversions of the D triad on our set of D, G and B strings.

Root position:
D - root
F# - major third
A - fifth

x
10
11
12
x
x

1st inversion:
F#
A
D

x
15
14
16
x
x

This one obviously also works shifted down an octave:

x
3
2
4
x
x

2nd inversion:
A
D
F#

x
19
19
19
x
x

This one obviously is working a whole lot better shifted down an octave:

x
7
7
7
x
x

Things to do:
Obviously play those D triads. Then play the A triads again. Compare them.
And now here's the most important part, which would be grabbing one A triad and then looking for the D triad requiring the least movement when you alternate between the two.

You would hopefully come up with the following movements.

A triad in root position and D triad in 2nd inversion:

x --- x
5 --- 7
6 --- 7
7 --- 7
x --- x
x --- x

A triad in 1st inversion and D triad in root position:

x ----- x
10 --- 10
9 ----- 11
11 --- 12
x ----- x
x ----- x

A triad in 2nd inversion and D triad in 1st inversion:

x --- x
14 --- 15
14 --- 14
14 --- 16
x --- x
x --- x

Obviously, this works very well shifted down an octave.

I defenitely recommend fooling around with these movements for quite a while as they represent what is possibly the most common movement of chords in many situations, as in "root note of chord goes up a fourth (or down a fifth)" (A to D), which is also the same in what's likely *the* most important progression in western harmony, namely the dominant-to-tonic move.
Remember, in the key of A, the dominant would be the E chord and the movement from E to A is exactly the same thing, as in the root of the V chord moving up a fourth (or down a fifth) to the I chord. We will cover that very movement in the next post.

Anyhow, as you may see already, once you're choosing the "right" inversions, movements between chords are pretty much as minimized as it gets. Which helps to create chord compings sitting in a mix better because you don't hop around in the frequency spectrum too much (as a bonus: These very movements could as well be used should you ever want to figure out choire or horn voice progessions and what not).

So, for now, here's another silly little example covering various movements from an A to a D triad.



Note: In the end there's a second guitar entering. It might by now be obvious what it's doing...

More to come.

 

[Sascha Franck]

And fwiw, while I was using the terms "root position" and "1st/2nd inversion", that's just to sort of explain some things. You absolutely don't need to know them. I'm using these very triads (and then some) all the time and still need to figure out which is which inversion and what not all the time. Simply because once you've explored triads by playing them, those terms become completely meaningless. After a while you just know their shapes and sounds, which is all that's relevant. No need to worry about the names.
Btw, the same goes for intervals, scalar functions, scale degrees and what else. IOW, once you know how to play diatonic thirds, you don't need to decipher whether what you're playing is a major or minor third. All that stuff is just to verbalize things when you try to explain them.

 

[maguchi]

Way cool subject and a timely post for me. Coincidentally Just a few days ago I put playing triads diatonically up and down the scale into my daily practice routine again. I had learned them before but haven't played them that way in awhile, so I'm a little rusty. Hoping to get proficient at triads again.

I have a couple questions. Forgive me if you already covered them in your previous posts.

1. Which stringsets are triads most useful on? I been doing major and minor scales diatonically on the 1st stringet (strings 1, 2 and 3), 2nd stringset (strings 2, 3, and 4) and 3rd stringset (strings 3, 4 and 5). I'm starting to think the 3rd stringset is overkill because it's in a lower register).

2. Should I throw augmented triads into the mix? With the minor scale I been playing triads with the ii chord diminished, the III chord major and the vii chord diminished. However I'm thinking about playing the III chord as augmented when in minor. It might be a cool sound for some variety.

 

[Sascha Franck]

1. Which stringsets are triads most useful on? I been doing major and minor scales diatonically on the 1st stringet (strings 1, 2 and 3), 2nd stringset (strings 2, 3, and 4) and 3rd stringset (strings 3, 4 and 5). I'm starting to think the 3rd stringset is overkill because it's in a lower register).

As said before, I most often use the D, G and B strings. IMO triads sound pretty balanced on those, their shapes are easy on the fingers, the "average" frequency range (as in playing, say, sort of in the middle of the fretboard range) is sitting where you expect a guitar to sit, you can integrate the E1 string for some melody notes and/or the lower strings for richness or bass notes.
I do use them on all sets of strings, though, and I sometimes really like them as low as possible on the E6, A and D strings (I'll post some examples later in the thread). Instant spaghetti western vibe, if you will (you can listen to some lower triad bits in the end of my last audio example, but they're played on the A, D and G strings).
I also use them in some wide/open position incarnations (nothing to do with using open strings), which sometimes requires skipping a string in the middle of the voicing. Something else I'll get to later on.

2. Should I throw augmented triads into the mix?

Sure. But then, you don't really need to learn them once you know where to find the fifth in a major triad. Raise that fifth by a semitone and there's your augmented triad. The most important benefit being that this is a symmetrical voicing, so the shape repeats each 4 semitones, hence no need to practice inversions.

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

Way cool subject and a timely post for me. Coincidentally Just a few days ago I put playing triads diatonically up and down the scale into my daily practice routine again. I had learned them before but haven't played them that way in awhile, so I'm a little rusty. Hoping to get proficient at triads again.

I have a couple questions. Forgive me if you already covered them in your previous posts.

1. Which stringsets are triads most useful on? I been doing major and minor scales diatonically on the 1st stringet (strings 1, 2 and 3), 2nd stringset (strings 2, 3, and 4) and 3rd stringset (strings 3, 4 and 5). I'm starting to think the 3rd stringset is overkill because it's in a lower register).

2. Should I throw augmented triads into the mix? With the minor scale I been playing triads with the ii chord diminished, the III chord major and the vii chord diminished. However I'm thinking about playing the III chord as augmented when in minor. It might be a cool sound for some variety.

Augmented for visualisation are kinda like °7 in use...

Take say A+
A C♯ E♯(F)
Raise the A a half step you get B♭-, raise the C♯ you get 2nd inversion D-, raise the F you get first inversion F♯-.

Alternatively lower the A a half step you get serving inversion D♭/C♯, lower the C♯ you get first inversion F, lower the F you get root position A.

As for most useful...most used are the ones on the upper middle string set (D G B strings).
Sadly starting this way to learn triads usually ends up ignoring the lower string set.
Because both lower string sets are identical fingerings.
So to go from say C

8 7 5 x x x

To the next string set it's just up a string set down 5 frets, or up 7 to raise it an octave

x 3 2 0 x x
x 15 14 12 x x

Moving to the next string set all one does is that the note landing on b string that was on the g string raise to be fingered a fret higher.

x x 10 9 8 x

Same going to the next string set, the note going to the b string needs to raise a half step

x x x 5 5 3


Quick memory help one set up, 5 frets down, raise note that lands on b string.

Obviously same goes in reverse, except the note that lands on the g from the b string gets lowered.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Sadly starting this way to learn triads usually ends up ignoring the lower string set.

Not gonna happen here.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Quick question: Easiest to use free TAB program? I really only need it to show those triads (and maybe some other things later on), no articulation stuff and what not required. Typing them in is starting to become cumbersome and I can't be arsed to learn Logic's TAB mode.

 

[maguchi]

I tried  Finale and it sucked. Too many obscure commands to learn. Have not tried  Dorico yet. So lately I just been writing out stuff by hand on manuscript/tab paper and turning them into PDFs for sharing and viewing on iPads and phones.

P.S. Not free, but only $6.99 and once you got it you can make copies of blank pages on your printer.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

It took me years to learn why major and minor thirds always sounded bad with distortion. With a cleaner tone, the clashes caused from equal temperament tuning don’t sound so bad. Jazz guitars almost need to be perfectly clean if they have more complex voicings, while heavier music generally needs to be single notes or 4ths or 5ths (unless you start flattening notes to ring out nicely),

With more gain, I think how the intervals are spread (or whether it’s right to play them at all) becomes more critical. It can be quite a fun challenge to find ways of implying the chord voicings across different instruments in the arrangement.

Loosely related, but I love when guitars bend into the 3rds and clashes because it can not only tease into the more “colourful” chord tones, but I think it’s also why blues guitar works so well.

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

It took me years to learn why major and minor thirds always sounded bad with distortion. With a cleaner tone, the clashes caused from equal temperament tuning don’t sound so bad. Jazz guitars almost need to be perfectly clean if they have more complex voicings, while heavier music generally needs to be single notes or 4ths or 5ths (unless you start flattening notes to ring out nicely),

With more gain, I think how the intervals are spread (or whether it’s right to play them at all) becomes more critical. It can be quite a fun challenge to find ways of implying the chord voicings across different instruments in the arrangement.

Loosely related, but I love when guitars bend into the 3rds and clashes because it can not only tease into the more “colourful” chord tones, but I think it’s also why blues guitar works so well.

I used to keep re-tuning my guitar when I was young.
Especially when going root to 3rd on the top string like open G to D.

And what was worse is that I actually believed a tuner to be the final word on temperament.
All that started to change with starting to play fretless and then playing with Steve Kimock's band.

Iirc Andy Timmons is willing to labor over the tuning of chords/triads enough to re-tune and punch seperate chords.

And when Chris Tsangarides produced Rock stuff in the 80s he seperated the muted open string chugs from the the third, 4th, 5th intervals played against them for eq'ing and tuning reasons.

Edit...
Eventually in ringing chords like say when an open G was in tune, and D wasn't I just pushed the 5th and root sharp.

After playing with Kimock I learned to bend the third down.