We NEED to talk about triads!

[jay mitchell]

Playing closed-voiced triads is relatively easy once you memorize all the intervals between adjacent tones. For example: in ascending order, a major triad, root position has a major third, then a minor third. In first inversion, the same triad has a minor third, then a perfect fourth. In second inversion, there's a perfect fourth, then a major third.

Open voicings are a only bit more challenging but potentially very rewarding. Using the same example as above, an open-voiced major triad in root position has a perfect fifth, then a major sixth. In first inversion, there is a minor sixth, then a perfect fifth. In second inversion, there's a major sixth, then a minor sixth. Because some voices are not on adjacent strings, playing open voiced triads requires selective string muting for chords and string skipping for arpeggios, so it will take a little more effort to learn.

While the above is not terribly specific to guitar, it's not especially difficult to translate general musical information about intervals to fretboard fingerings/shapes. Knowing the intervals in triads, combined with knowledge of the intervals between string pairs, enables the player to learn and execute triads with minimal effort, both as chords and as arpeggios. IMO it's better to learn the shapes/fingerings on your own directly from knowledge of the various intervals than to rely on fretboard diagrams created by someone else.

 

[Sascha Franck]

IMO it's better to learn the shapes/fingerings on your own directly from knowledge of the various intervals than to rely on fretboard diagrams created by someone else.

I absolutely agree. And this is why I only did show diagrams all over the fretboard for the first round covering major triads.

 

[AFKAEjay(retired)]

fretboard diagrams created by someone else

Let’s ask the admins here to put these on the same list as politics and Ts

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

I actually don't do it this way. I just play. I do however try to cover as many keys as possible. And I do especially try to cover less guitar friendly keys - because even if transposing is easy and sometimes things are just a centimeter away, there's still a noticeable difference between, say, C and Db, even if you leave the open strings out.

Yeah my old teacher Don Mock used to say the guitar is a slide ruler.
Sadly what that doesn't take into account is us being used to fretmarkers that make that Db a pain

 

[PLX]

Yeah my old teacher Don Mock used to say the guitar is a slide ruler.
Sadly what that doesn't take into account is us being used to fretmarkers that make that Db a pain

Ed.. "triad" means 3, right ?

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

Ed.. "triad" means 3, right ?

Yes why

 

[Sascha Franck]

Sadly what that doesn't take into account is us being used to fretmarkers that make that Db a pain

Yeah, it's actually quite weird. Playing in Db is kinda like the moment when you can play better without looking at the fretboard because doing so will only confuse you.

---

Ed.. "triad" means 3, right ?

You didn't ask me and Ed already answered, but still (even if I have partially covered it already): Yes, and a "typical" triad is considered the smallest group of notes to form a "real" chord. We could have a discussion whether that is really so, but that's pretty much the general consensus.
Sort of because of that, triads can also be considered being the smallest building blocks to pretty much sufficiently "describe" any harmonically functional context.

And fwiw, a "typical" triad consists of root, third and fifth of the chord. To build them up yourself within a key/scale, you grab any key/scale note as your root and then slap two diatonic (within the key/scale) thirds on top of it. You can then analyse the results (I've done just that in one of the first posts in this thread, in case you're interested).

 

[PLX]

Yes why

Why not ?

 

[Sascha Franck]

To get back on track, as a sort of "interlude" and as promised - kinda triggered by @bucephalus - here's some true horrorshow cowboy chord stuff, which I will try to make a little more acceptable (and if only from a player's POV) using the very triads discussed so far.

I'll stick to the key of good old C major and use one of the most common chord progressions in existance, namely the 1645 progression, in roman numbers: I-VI-IV-V.
Hence, the chords used will be C-Am-F-G.

I'd almost take a bet that pretty much everyone has already strummed these (or something very similar) on their acoustics in the beginning of their career, possibly struggling a bit with the F, kinda faking their way through it, likely using a "not so complete" barre version, as in leaving out the A5 and E6 strings or whatsoever.
Anyhow, when you hear it, it'll be instantly familar.

And instantly cheesy! Don't say you haven't been warned!

So, I tried my best to use lame drums, bass, piano and guitar patterns for a start. Uninspiring all throughout, to put it mildly.
Next I added two guitars just using the very kind of major and minor triads I was trying to explore so far to improve the situation. I'm not saying it's acceptable music all of a sudden (we all know about the non-polish-able turds), but at least these kinda parts are more fun to play and IMO it's at least a little more acceptable for the audience.
8 bars of pure horror, 8 more bars of slightly less horror:



No idea whether this demonstrates anything properly for you folks, but personally, I defenitely think it's a noticeable improvement. Anyhow, it basically was just to show a sort of real life example (unfortunately, I sometimes have to deal with less than enjoyable music, things like this help me to get along with those situations).
Here's what I did. The left (almost faux slide) guitar is playing the chords very strictly as written:

So, a really easy part.

For the right, more "rhythmi-sized" guitar I was using a little bit of additional movement by approaching (or "embellishing") the target chords by other triads from C major. Without going into any details about the hows and whys, this is something you can do with pretty much any chords out of the key. Just release them to the target chord in time and you'll be fine.
Otherwise it's exactly the same triads as already covered:

And that should be it for now.

I hope you've enjoyed that marvellous (or should I better say "mindnumbing revolutionary"?), emotionally pleasing piece of art!

 

[bucephalus]

glad to have triggered a true horror show with my cowboy chords

 

[bucephalus]

Though it is hard to do solo acoustic gigs without any cowboy chords.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Though it is hard to do solo acoustic gigs without any cowboy chords.

Absolutely. And I have zero issues with them. But there might be some interesting ground to cover about how you could use these very triads with just some minor modifications for solo guitar stuff as well.

 

[Dimiguitar]

I am not a properly educated player, and it'll take me a while to wrap my head around all this, but I've set some time aside to properly study the posts. Thank you

 

[Sascha Franck]

Preparing some more stuff...
(well, maybe not exactly)

 

[Waltmanno]

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.

I don't understand why in C Major the D, E, A and B are in minor form?

 

[Mikael Dez]

I don't understand why in C Major the D, E, A and B are in minor form?

C major, D Minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, B diminished are the chords of C major, that’s why! Im not sure about B being “just minor” here but still

 

[Sascha Franck]

C major, D Minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, B diminished are the chords of C major, that’s why! Im not sure about B being “just minor” here but still

In my quoted post, it's Bdim (or Bminb5 or VIIdim).
Otherwise, correct, that's plain and simply the chords you get when building a chord on each scale degree.

And fwiw, I have quite some more things to come - but as it's been summer, I was rather spending my time outside, swimming, SUP paddling and what not.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I don't understand why in C Major the D, E, A and B are in minor form?

Fwiw, do you know what distinguishes a major from a minor chord?

 

[Mikael Dez]

In my quoted post, it's Bdim (or Bminb5 or VIIdim).
Otherwise, correct, that's plain and simply the chords you get when building a chord on each scale degree.

And fwiw, I have quite some more things to come - but as it's been summer, I was rather spending my time outside, swimming, SUP paddling and what not.

This post happened to coincide with me taking actual guitar lessons and a music theory class after 20 years of ignoring it lol. I look forward to anything you add on to it!