We NEED to talk about triads!

maguchi said:
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.

View attachment 38224View attachment 38225

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

Got tons of sheet/TAB and whatever PDF templates, but I don't feel like writing manually, then do a foto, then beam it back to the computer and what not.
 
Hopefully a rather quick one. On to the E triad, as mentioned before, so we can play proper I-V, I-IV-V and what not progressions.
As I already covered the D triad, there's not much new here as anything E will just live two frets up from D on the fingerboard.

Root position:
E - root
G# - major third
B - fifth
x
12
13
14
x
x

1st inversion:
G#
B
E

x
17
16
18
x
x

This one obviously also works shifted down an octave:

x
5
4
6
x
x

2nd inversion:
B
E
G#

x
21
21
21
x
x

This one is hardly working up there anymore but perfectly fine shifted down an octave:

x
9
9
9
x
x


Following the same "minimal movement" rules applied to the A-D progression already, the possible movements from our good old A triad to E look like this:

A root position to E 1st inversion

x --- x
5 --- 5
6 --- 4
7 --- 6
x --- x
x --- x

A 1st inversion to E 2nd inversion

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


A 2nd inversion to E root position

x ----- x
14 --- 12
14 --- 13
14 --- 14
x ----- x
x ----- x


And a very stupid sound example, chord progression is A, E, E, A. Just as they do in cuntry land, yeehaw.



I think the next posting (which I am almost done with) will then show how all the three triads covered so far may work in combination (or maybe not, as I will stick to that lame a$$ country backing).
 
Time to bring things together! Well, at least some of them...

As said before, the chords of the first, fourth and fifth degree of a major scale (or I, IV, V in roman numbers), namely tonic, subdominant and dominant are possibly *the* single most important barebone of western music (btw, their minor variations are somewhat similarily important but there's some things requiring additional explanations and at least given traditional songs and such, they're not just as as important - but we'll get to them later on).

Perhaps you might want to google that very chord progression, it'll result in an almost endless list of songs. I won't post any examples as I don't even want to get close to any "but how is it done in this or that song?" discussion.

Ok, now that we have all the three chords more or less covered as triads (at least on the D, G and B strings), it's about time to combine all the three. For a start, we will again follow the "minimal voice movement from one chord to the next" rule.

For all examples, I'll be using a I-IV-V-I progression (hence tonic, subdominant, dominant, tonic) as the most relevant movements (tonic to subdominant and dominant back to tonic) are covered.
So the progression in A major will be A, D, E, A.

Here's the 3 possible "shortest movement" shapes (ph34r my l337 new TAB skills!)

A root position, D 2nd inversion, E 1st inversion:
ADE_01.png


A 1st inversion, D root position, E 2nd inversion:
ADE_02.png


A 2nd inversion, D 1st inversion, E root position:
ADE_03.png


Obviously, it's a good idea to play all these. And as progressions using these very 3 chords come in tons of variations (mixing the I, IV and V chords almost randomly), it's possibly a good idea to just fool around with some different combinations.

For the following sound examples I'll stick with I, IV, V, I, though.

Here's the three displayed inversion variations just plain and simple:



And for a very little bit of deviation, one can as well play all of them over an A pedal note (a pedal note usually means one single bass note used throughout multiple chords). The progression is losing a bit of its functional character that way (especially when it comes to the E triad, because the A bass note isn't part of the chord), but it's possibly a nice way to enhance a longer passage where you might usually only find an A chord.



And finally here's something with more movements. I usually try to shift position while staying on the chord (hence using another inversion in another position) and stay within the position when the chord change happens. IMO this is adding some "plausibility" (if you will) because the movements from chord to chord are using very little voice movement, which, in general, is a very typical arrange technique (for all kinds of polyphonic "environments", be it vocals, horns or whatever). You also avoid parallel voice movements that way (which is a pretty wellknown "to be avoided" thing in many arrangement 101s, having its origins in classical music already).
And yes, as threatened, it's the same cheesy country backing thing...



And that should be it for today.
 
Ok, so far I only covered major triads on the D, G and B strings. To complete the "major triads in close position all over the neck" story, I would now like to cover the other stringsets as well (note: Might be obvious, but due to all of them being a perfect fourth apart from each other, the shapes on E, A and D strings will be identical to those on the A, D and G strings).

And while building the rest of those triads would follow exactly the same principles as on the covered set of strings, while I also defenitely believe that exploring things yourself is a great idea, here's an overview of all the (close position) A major triads on all sets of strings pretty much all over the fretboard.

R - root position
i1 - 1st inversion
i2 - 2nd inversion

A triads all strings all inversions.png




Notes: I think it's absolutely great to know the function of each note in each of these voicings. I could've tried to mark them in the diagram above, but not only would that've meant some fooling around, I also actually think it's counterproductive. For a start, knowing inversions is fine but after a while, having the internal structure of those triads internalized is just immensely helpful.

As a short recap:
Root position (bottom to top) is 1, 3, 5, 1st inversion is 3, 5, 1, 2nd inversion is 5, 1, 3. The most important notes likely being 1 and 3.

How you get there is almost irrelevant, I can almost safely say that once you keep using them and especially modifying them (which I will hopefully cover quite a bit in some following posts), it'll pretty certainly kick in more or less naturally.

A thing that'll very likely speed up the process is to combine different chords as done in my previous examples while (at least for a start) focusing on minimal movements between them.
And it's also a great idea to examine the individual voice movements, simply because it'll likely allow you to navigate between different inversions and progressions much faster.
As an example, when you move from A to D, there's a move from C# (major third of A) to D (new root). Once you can "see" this move, you will more or less instantly know what inversion to build around that D.

However, all that takes some "doing it" (I wouldn't even call it "practising", simply because these can be useful straight from the start and when you keep going, things will come automatically).

Anyhow, here's a last example using that sort of lame-aging A, D, E, A progression, utilizing the very same triads on 3 different sets of strings, namely E6-A-D, D-G-B and G-B-E (leaving out the A-D-G set because it's the same shapes as E6-A-D anyway), also all even using the very same inversions, hence the tonal material spread over 3 octaves.
Feel free to blame me on the musical content (below), but I think it still goes to show how these fit very well in a number of positions and how each of the sets can nicely accomodate a given spot in the music.

The triads and inversions used all throughout would be:
A root position
D 2nd inversion
E 1st inversion

And here's a little TAB of them (and how they move):

ADAE all stringsets.png


And finally, another gloriously cheesy sound example:



Soooo, while this is still only scratching the surface, I think after this post it's time to leave all that happy-go-lucky major triad stuff behind for some time and head over to the ohhh-sooo-sad minor variations. Stay tuned. Or so.
 
Allright, it's been a while. I almost forgot that we need to talk about triads - but we really do need to! And it's minor triad time now!
Which is why this will be a kind of interlude posting. I thought about somehow having it creep in silently, but it's possibly a bit more relevant. So here we go.
If you know about the "harmonic situation" in minor keys, please skip this post.

---

While not generally related to playing triads, once we're dealing with minor chords and especially minor keys, at least a bit of harmonical content will start to become relevant. I'll try my best to at least explain the most common thing here.

Basically, we'll be treating minor keys (which will be the first vehicle I'll be using to demonstrate minor triads) pretty much the same as major keys as far as the most rudimentary chord progressions are concerned. Just as in a major key, the single most fundamental chords in a minor key are tonic, subdominant and dominant.
So, in general, when we look from a major key's POV, we will move our tonal center to the parallel minor (I hope you folks are somewhat familiar with that term, otherwise feel free to ask).

Coming from C major, we would shift our tonal center to A minor (minor third or 3 halfsteps down). And instead of calling it the parallel of a major scale, the scale that we're now dealing with even gets a new name. The parallel minor scale of a major scale is called "natural minor" (or, in "mode lingo": aeolian, we may get more into the mode stuff later...).
The root of that new tonal center key would then as well become our tonic chord. So, instead of a C major chord, an A minor chord will be our new tonic.
This is working every bit the same for the subdominant and dominant chords. Their roots are located on the 4th and 5th degree of that "new" natural minor scale, all of them 3 halfsteps below their parallel major chords. In the case of A natural minor, we will end up with Amin (tonic), Dmin (subdominant) and Emin (dominant).

This is basically it. Just that it isn't. Unfortunately.

Anyone who may have played some stuff in A minor already (which is very likely true for pretty much any guitar player not a total beginner anymore) may have noticed that in whatever chord progressions, all of sudden an E major (or E7 - which contains a major triad "baseline" chord as well) shows up.
Now how is that? If we are in A natural minor pretty much all throughout, what FFS is that E major doing there, featuring a G# as its major third, defenitely not part of our A natural minor scale (which would be A-B-C-D-E-F-G)?

I'm not sure how and when that happened historically, but one important factor might be that composers aren't mainly looking for single scales (or keys) to base their compositions on but rather for "strong" harmonic/voice movements. And if there's one of the strongest voice movements (maybe even the strongest ever) within a major chord progression, it's got to be the movement from the major third of the dominant to the root of the tonic chord. In the case of the key of C that'd be the B in our dominant chord G moving a halfstep up to our tonic C's root, namely the C. And if we were in the key of A major, that'd be the G# (major third of our dominant chord E) moving to the root A of the A chord.
This movement is so strong that it even got a dedicated name, it's called the "leading tone" (the term is used for other halfstep-up movements as well, but this is the strongest case).
The strength of this movement is pretty much exclusively defined by it being a chromatic movement up.

Now, when we look at the chord of the 5th scale degree in A natural minor, namely the Emin chord, hence what is supposed to be our "dominant", we will notice that there's a G, not a G#. But as the resolving chromatic upwards movement of the major third of a dominant chord to the root of our tonic chord is *so* strong (making things sound very "plausible", so to say - I'll do a direct comparison later on), this has simply been "adopted" by composers to also become a common thing within minor keys.

I hear you already: "Ok, so what's all the fuss about? Just play a damn E major chord instead of the minor one the A natural minor would give away and call it a day!"

And that's precisely what we'll be doing later on - but there's still an issue arising. Kinda "hidden" as long as we only talk chords, but becoming a really painful thing once we start to, say, improvise or just create some melodies.

As long as we stay within a typical I-IV-V progression in a major key, the single major scale will be sufficient to cover pretty much all our melodic/improvisational needs (at least as long as target notes are concerned).
Within a minor key, this is not the case anymore. Because once we alter that Emin in A natural minor to become an E(maj), the natural minor scale won't fit anymore all of a sudden, simply because it contains a G whereas the E chord is using a G#.
We can now "fake" our ways around that, avoid the G# once that E chord shows up and otherwise call it a day. Which is absolutely legit.
Yet, all our melodies will kinda ignore the reason for that G# to exist in the first place, namely a very strong, "plausible" voice movement.

The solution to this dilemma is pretty simple on paper: Once that E chord shows up in the key of A minor, we will simply keep using the same scale with the exception of the offending G. We will simply play a G# instead.
Yeah, that was simple. Just that it isn't.
The resulting creature that we will abuse over that very major dominant chord in a minor key is called the "harmonic minor scale" (note: There's other scales to suit these kinda harmonic situations, but we'll leave it at this very single thing for now). Which still doesn't harm us as we don't need to think about names while playing.
What will however have a big impact on our playing is the different structure of the scale, requiring us to temporarily give up our most familiar finger patterns.

To illustrate, the A harmonic minor scale would be: A-B-C-D-E-F-G#-A. All of a sudden there's an interval of 3 halfsteps between one note and the next (between F and G#), something that just doesn't exist in a major or natural minor scale. Hence, we will have to adjust all our finger patterns to accomodate that new situation. And believe me, none of the possible finger patterns is as comfortable as a plain major/minor scale, especially considering that we will likely never be just as familiar as with those patterns, simply because we (at least typically) only need this new scale construct in special situations.
Very often, for, say, 4 chords out of 5 in a minor key progression, we will be just fine using the natural minor scale. Which our fingers will likely be very familiar with. Which will allow us to use our common major/minor pentatonics, all repeating patterns, 3nps constructs and what not. Just to come to the point of that dreaded "modified" dominant chord to show up and spoil all the fun. Booo!

Does that suck? You bet it does. But we will have to learn dealing with it, even if we usually stay outside of the jazzy realm (in jazz, using different scale types or variations is absolutely common).

So much about that little harmony related interlude.
 
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So, on to the next "chapter", namely minor chords.

For now, I'll be using the key of A minor (parallel minor to C major).

To adress one potential question: Why not stick with A major and use the parallel F# minor?
There's several reasons:

- As within A major, the open A string will allow you to quickly put things into at least some sort of context.

- You're forced to deal with another key. Which, as it's the parallel to C major, isn't a big deal, though.

- Possibly most interesting, you'll be able to compare the 3 main characters in this episode directly to their major variations. And that actually *is* a big deal (or the beginning of a big deal), as altering the notes within triads is opening up for a whole new world of options. As said, observing the difference between major and minor variations is just a start.

---

Then, quite unfortunately but important, some minor key "issues" possibly need explanation.

As soon as we're in a minor key "for real", the scale degrees of the chords will be labeled according to the minor tonic chord.

Let's have a quick look at the scale degrees of the C major scale (C-D-E-F-G-A-B):

I = C
IIm = Dm
IIIm = Em
IV = F
V = G
VIm = Am
VIIdim = Bdim

As C major and A (natural) minor use exactly the same notes, we could now just go like "Ok, our Am is VI". Which it actually is.
But as we're also treating it as the new tonic chord (for now at least) which everything is related to, we will as well define it as our new I chord.
So, our list of chord degrees in A minor would actually look like this:

Im = Am
IIdim = Bdim
bIII = C
IVm = Dm
Vm = Em
bVI = F
bVII = G

---

Note: You may wonder about the accidentals (the "b"s in this case). These are used when a scale degree deviates from its "normal" state in a major key. Example: In A major, the major third C# is 4 semitones up from the root A and the "III" chord degree building up on it isn't additionally labeled. In A minor however, the minor third C is just 3 semitones up from the root and hence the "III" chord requires additional labeling, becoming "bIII".
And to make matters worse: This isn't always treated in the same fashion. For instance, when we talk about chord symbols, a major 7th needs an extra indication (maj7, j7, whatever), whereas the minor 7th doesn't. But when looking at chords building upon scale degrees, it's the other way around. And it's again the other way around on thirds.
I know, it sucks.
But (!), on a positive note: While chord symbols are pretty common (so you need to know which labels apply there), you rarely analyze stuff much. You may need parts of it for the Nashville Number System, though, but let's better not get into that (being in/from Germany, I'm not too familiar with it anyway - which actually is pretty bad as it's a kickass system).

---

Back on topic.

For a start as a very simple thing, same things as with A major, we'll build an A minor triad on the D, G and B strings, starting with the root position.
Following our triad building "rules", we'll start with the root A and slap two diatonic thirds on top.
The result will be: A-C-E.
Analysis will reveal that it's a minor third (C) and a perfect fifth (E), which you may want to store as the formula for minor triads.
First inversion will then be C-E-A, third inversion will be E-A-C.

So here's the three inversions on said set of strings:

11 Amin triads DGB strings.png


And as this will become more and more important throughout further explorations, here's how the A min triad is different from the A maj triad. It's pretty simply on paper, the C in A min becomes a C# in A maj, but it's a pretty decent idea to actually look at where those C/C#-es are located and how you would have to modify one triad to get to the other.
For me, being able to quickly modify triads (and it goes *way* beyond just making a minor triad major or vice versa), is one of the biggest deals why I like that "triad mindset" so much whenever dealing with chords.
So here's all inversions of A min vs A maj triads on the D-G-B strings:

12 Amin vs Amaj DGB strings.png


Alright, I could now present you the same stuff on all sets of strings, but I won't. Why?

1) Yes, it actually is some boring/exhausting stuff for me to write down.

2) It's by far the best way to figure things out on your own, at least partially. All required information can be found earlier in this thread and should be easy enough to digest, so you can either start to build those A min triads on the other sets of strings from scratch or take the A major triad graphics I've posted, look up the note C# in them and lower it by a semitone.

3) I'll post some examples of some chord progressions in the next posts likely covering some of the other stringsets, so they will be "half-shown" anyway.

---

Short (hopefully) rest, next post will have some examples.

Edit: if you are interested in lame arguing about how the CAGED "system" is just as great and the entire thread is all bogus, continue reading the folliwing two pages. But if you rather want to fast forward to the next on-topic post, you might want to click here (<---).
 
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And on a serious note: This is another approach. Nothing more, nothing less. For myself, this approach beats CAGED hands down. Simply because it's generalized rather than being guitar focused (which CAGED is).
 
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