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Hello fellow AM Members. I hope you are all doing well.
I almost bought another course to learn Triads today but then I stopped myself, looked at the Triads available on AM, then took lesson EP485 tonight. I know there are a bunch of other Triad lessons on the site, so I’m curious if any of you have become REALLY proficient at using them in your playing? They seem like quite the endeavour to learn thoroughly, but that is one of my goals in 2025, so I would love to hear about your experience with Triads!
As always, thank you in advance!!
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Hi Bill,
I found it’s helpful on AM to search for all the lessons that mention your topic for study, list the EP numbers and watch a few. There are Micro Lessons too that often clarify ideas I didn’t quite understand.
My trouble is I don’t always know what I don’t know, those Aha pieces of the puzzle. At that point I can often put a little study course together that suits me.
It will take time, relax and enjoy the process.
I joined a band and was surprised to find we are all just getting by with huge holes in our musical knowledge and still making ok music. Some people are more musical and have amazing memories. Most learn a few nuggets and perfect that and get by very well on that. -
Hi Bill,
The thing about triads is there are a limited number of them and many shapes start to repeat. Beyond learning shapes though, it’s important to see where the intervals are within each shape especially to find target notes and potentially start to add other colour tones to the triad.
Finding major and minor triads especially within CAGED chord shapes is what will advance your guitar playing. Playing pentatonics is great but using triads is what will, eventually, make your playing sound connected to the chords of the progression.
There are so many ways to use triads, ie. as a smaller chord with a different voicing for rhythm, as a skeleton around which to create licks often in combination with a pentatonic, as a shape in which you can find to find a target note for your lead, using upper structure triads to represent chords,( ie. a diminished triad starting on the third of a major triad is a rootless dominant voicing), combining triads or adding triads to a pentatonic to bring out a modal flavour.
All the things we hate to do as guitar players ie. learn the notes on the neck, learn what notes are in chords, understand intervals on the neck, learn triads, learn arpeggios, learn the octave pattern on the neck, in combination with seeing the CAGED layout on the neck will ultimately give you a level of mastery of the fretboard and free up a huge amount of creativity. Not to mention, that level of fret board knowledge will make learning songs so much easier.
When I started learning guitar I thought it was all about the scales but I have come to realize it’s largely about the triads.
John -
I’ve watched ep485 several times. I’ve been learning triads for several months. Learning the shapes is easy. I struggle with knowing where the notes are on the fretboard, which I’m slowly learning. I know how to figure them out quickly, but that’s still a couple seconds and the song keeps playing. Other great lessons are, EP399, EP459, Ep486, EP514,& EP574. Under Lesson Categories, Triads is one of the many options and lists even more, but not all of the triad lessons.
Have fun! It’s an interesting journey!
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Thank you everyone! I appreciate the feedback. I will continue to focus on Triads and see what type of progress I make this year. I have also been learning the CAGED system, which is helpful since I am also learning the Triads within each shape. I have to believe at some point I will have an “Aha” moment when things will make sense and fall into place.
I recently had one of these moments while watching a Robben Ford video on harmonizing the Major Scale. He made the point that each of the minor chords in the major scale is the relative minor of each of the major chords (e.g., the C Major scale is: C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bdim, and the relative minors are: C = Am, F = Dm, G = Em). Somehow I never learned that through all the reading/lessons I have taken on music theory . . .
Thanks again!
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Hi Bill, I found my connectivity with triads increased when I was able to base them around the E,A and C Shapes to CAGED and not in isolation to the key of the lesson. – The aha moment – the ‘Bread and Butter’ of Triads are in these shapes. Being able to establish Major Triads: 2 x A Shape, 2 x E Shape and 2 x C Shape and the Minor Triads: 2 x A Shape, 2 x E Shape and 2 x C Shape totally 12 all up was all I needed. That was the structure I needed to bring it all together and base triads from those foundations. (PDF attached)
Lot of lessons to choose from on triads for the application of them as well as obscure one’s that don’t mention triads in the title like ep 540.
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Nothing fancy, I just use a free program Libre Office writer (similar to word) and draw it up from a blank page with any cut and paste items from other pdfs I have created and add additional text and dots etc. It does the job.
I appreciate the response, and the graphic. It is very simple yet very informative!
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