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A chord is simple a group of three or more notes sounded together. And even that is not quite right. We will sometimes talk about a chord that is only implied. For example, if there is a melody that is played in arpeggiated chords, the notes don’t sound together, but we still talk about the chords, because the music implies that the notes belong together.
For example, in this brilliant Prelude to Bach’s First Cello Suite, the notes are only single notes at a time, but the first measure is a G chord (actually a G9), and the second measure is a C chord (or Cmajor7). No one has ever been better at implying chords and their progressions from melody lines than Bach.
For our purposes, a chord is simply notes sounding together, whether actually played, or just implied. So if someone asks you to show them on a guitar, have them simply strum the open strings from 5 to 1. When they seem puzzled, tell them its A Hard Day’s Night (its not, but its about as close as you can get on a six string guitar).
TRIADS
Western harmony is built on the triads. A triad is simply a chord of three notes, constructed in thirds. The lowest note in the triad is called the Root. The second note is the Third. And the third note is the Fifth.
Remember from the interval posts that there are two basic kinds of thirds, major and minor. There are four ways that you can stack these these – major/minor, minor/major, minor/minor, and major/major. This gives the four basic triads:
Major Triad – is a minor third on top of a major third. Counting from the root, its a major third and a perfect fifth.
Minor Triad – is a major third on top of a minor third. Counting from the root, its a minor third and a perfect fifth.
Diminished Triad – is a minor third on top of a minor third. Counting from the root, its a minor third and a diminished fifth.
Augmented Triad – is a major third on top of a major third. Counting from the root, it is a major third and a major third.
Because of the layout of the guitar, the shape of playing these triads varies by string set. Each will have three distinct shapes, one for strings 654 and 543, the second for strings 432, and the last for strings 321. I have attached a pdf of the shape of each of these triads, in that order – major, minor, diminished, and augmented.
It is extremely valuable to learn and recognize these shapes. They come up all of the time in playing, both chords and leads. And there is a ton that you can do with them. I will get to some of the things that make triads so cool in later posts. This is just a brief introduction. See how simple it is: only four triads – only three root shapes.
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@duffyprattcomcast-net, great information. I got myself confused about augmented chords this morning and the info is right here. There is a typo in the Augmented triad paragraph, though, it should read augmented fifth.
It might be helpful to present the root position triad page as a fretboard diagram to show how this theory fits common chord shapes. I may do that exercise for myself and try to post it.
John -
Yup, you are right about the typo. I should proofread more closely, and even then I’m not positive I would catch those sorts of silly mistakes.
I would be happy to do it as chord diagrams, but I’m not sure there is an easy way in Guitar Pro to simply present chord diagrams. Do you know of a software program that does that?
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Only know about freehand on printout fretboard diagrams. It is probably more useful for C and G shaped chords that have the root, 3, 5 voicing. A, D and E chords have a root, 5, root voicing. Although the bottom of the A shape is root, 3, 5 and the middle of the E shape is root, 3 5, so some but not all (ie. inversions) common small chord voicings may become apparent.
John -
haven’t tryed this but it may be a free ware that will do what you need
http://www.brothersoft.com/quickchord-135943.html
Gordo
Update, here’s what it looks like.
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That’s exactly what I need, but its Windoze only. Looking for the Mac, or App equivalent. Prefer free.
The killer is that I had Windows and Parallels on my Mac until yesterday. I no longer use the Metatrader program that required it, and I needed to free up a lot of space on the hard drive or buy a new comp.
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