Description
In this week’s lesson, you’ll learn 3 essential triads and the embellishments that go with each of them that will allow you to play up and down the fretboard.
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Slow Walkthrough
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Been with you for over 13 years. Great lesson as usual. Thanks
Thank you !
I think this was one of your best lessons for because it is short to the point and an extreme wealth of info. A serious lightbulb moment for me. It was something I knew but it crystalized it for me and filled in a hole that I didnt know was there. I feel very lucky that you are able to share your skills and many awesome talents so well. Thankyou
Would you consider doing this format with minor triads and ideas on how to use them? Thanks
nice grove like it
Wow, talk about a light bulb moment.
Thank you Brian
.Great lesson.
One fun thing to do with this ML is try different keys and to start with each of the three triad shapes. The “recycling” of the shapes quickly maps out where all the 1,4,5s are on the neck in any key. Thanks, Brian!
Hello .
Fine lesson,will it be possible to stress with another lesson on the rhytmic part ,with the use of ghost notes,and this particular strumming pattern.?
This will be for sure an excellent exercice.
This is for me ,and i suppose other members , the main problem .
Have a good day.And thanks in advanced.
Joe
You will likely need to slow this way down Joel if you are having trouble with the rhythm aspect. You can set the SoundSlice app to 50% and work on the rhythm that way. The technique is just alternate picking/strumming and pressing down on the fretted notes in time with the rhythmic notation. Just pay attention to where the up and down strokes fall. If you click and drag two bars of music at a time and just tap out the rhythm with your hand on the table or use a pencil to tap the beat out, you will get it. It’s just a matter of listening carefully and then playing the rhythm. Once you get the overall rhythm down, start doing one chord shape strums in time with the beat to just focus in on the rhythm part only. The goal is to make it flow and nail all the down and up strokes in time. Again, I would loop over two bars at a time. You are not trying for perfection, just general getting into the groove and move on to the next two bars.
Then finally, you can begin to switch chords as written, still working at 50% speed. This lesson is at quite a fast tempo, so there is no need to overwhelm yourself with trying to match Brian’s speed at first. Get it down at the slower tempo and you will begin to improve much faster.
As far as the ghost notes, those are just muted strums. The best exercise for learning how to do this well is to start off with much more simple rhythms. So play on beat 1 and 2 only, and all others are muted. Just stick to a single chord shape at first. Then try adding in the AND of 3 beat which is an up stroke. There are many different possible rhythms to practice and you just have to go through all of them to learn them all. Use a metronome or a drum track to make sure you are staying in time.
Thanks a lot for this reply.
It is compulsory to manage this technique to have good sound.
And this is really a challenge for me.!!!
👍
Thanks Michael that helps a lot. Your not alone Joel, I was having trouble trying to get this rhythm and right when I thought I had it the next bar switched it up. I guess like Brian always says keep the right hand moving.
Thanks but thats quite an advanced skill! I’m trying the first 2 bars slowed down but have hit a bit of a wall! I’ll see if I can work out the simple version you suggest.
where do you adjust the speed, I can’t find it.
Hi, 100% agree. Getting to grips with the triads with the left hand is not too bad, I can’t get the rhythm by ear or looking at the tab, its a whol other skill!!
Agreed
Agree 100%, would love to see a discussion of the right hand technique, that seems to be where a lot of the great sound Brian is getting is coming from.
Hi Brian,
once again, a really great lesson!
One thing I do miss, though — and it would make things a lot easier for me — is a quick explanation of the picking pattern at certain points, for example around 5:52 in the video. You tend to be a little sparing with that, not only in this lesson but in some of the others as well.
Sometimes you say something like, “down, down-up, up, up-down-up,” and that already helps a lot. I especially liked ML138 in this respect, where you actually wrote out the picking pattern.
But maybe you deliberately designed ML151 so that your students have to sit down and figure out the pattern by ear themselves 😉 Which, of course, wouldn’t be a bad exercise either.
Take care, enjoy your weekend, and keep inspiring us.
Thanks,
Norbert
(the guy with the “Tension and Release Song” from a few years ago 😉
A policeman sees a drunken man crawling around under a streetlamp, obviously looking for something.
“What have you lost?” the policeman asks.
“My key,” says the man.
The policeman starts helping him search. After a while, they still haven’t found it.
“Are you sure you lost it here?” the policeman asks.
“No,” says the drunk. “I lost it over there.”
“Then why are you looking here?”
“Because the light is better here.”
Freely adapted from Paul Watzlawick, The Situation Is Hopeless, But Not Serious: The Pursuit of Unhappiness (1983), chapter “The Lost Key, or ‘More of the Same’.”
I had been looking for tabs. Several (AM) “policemen” tried to help me. (A big thank-you to all of them!)
So how did I finally find the right tabs?
I took another look at the PDF Brian had posted online — and realized that I simply hadn’t been looking properly.
Those who can read — and actually look — clearly have an advantage. :)))
What really helped me was putting together all the tips from the AM community, taking another careful look at Brian’s tabs, and counting along for myself according to his notation:
“And 2 and 3, 3, mute, mute, 5, mute, mute …” and so on.
It’s not that easy to hear every single muted stroke in Brian’s MP4 video — or in Michael’s, for that matter. At least not for me, even when I slowed the video down.
So the solution for me was: take another look at what I had thought was simply a sequence of chords — and count.
Because rhythm is something I can (actually) do … :)))
Apparently, unlike Watzlawick’s drunk, I had been looking under the right lamp all along — I just hadn’t looked closely enough.
Great Triad lesson. Thanks Brian.
highly appreciated lesson. Thanks Brian.
Hi What do the XXXs mean in the tab? Doesn’t sound like you hit the strings.
Muted strums
After reading thru other feedback, I see others have similar challenges, Is there, or could there be, a lesson that deals with muted strum patters in music like this? I came up with a similar strategy to Michael K’s suggestion above.
Great explanation on using these triads going up the neck with different shapes. You always manage to keep me interested every week! Looing forward to tying these into pentatonics.
Another great lesson. I seem to always get more out of these short ones.
Brian great lesson do more of this. I am always impressed when I see a really good rhythm guitar player playing out and doing this. Keep these coming!
Very cool. I knew where the root notes were on the full six string chords, but you are right, I need to know the fret board. Accuracy in strumming will be a challenge for me, I tend to bludgeon all six strings on full chords…I’ll need to get subtle….
Great triad lesson Brian. Thank you.
Any chance of some ML’s on playing the changes … over triads?
Your ML’s are so much easier to digest and practice for those us with busy schedules.
another great one and very useful! Thank you, Brian!
Hi Brian, it’s me again. 😉
I’ve been trying all kinds of things to figure out your picking patterns on my own. Along the way I came across BLG005 and EP073. They didn’t really solve this particular problem, but they were great finds anyway. 😉
So here’s my request/suggestion once again: could you please give me/us the tabs? PLEASE. 😉
I’ve got the chord shapes on those three strings down, no matter what key we’re in. What I still can’t quite nail is the rhythm.
It would also be a big help if you could point me to any other lessons where you’ve used the same or similar picking patterns and included the tabs. That might already be all I need.
And maybe someone else reading this comment can point me in the right direction too …
Warm greetings from a tab-hungry student
Norbert ,try EP343. It’s quite similar, but also quite complex.
Andrew
Thank you very much, Andrew.
The reference to the tabs from EP343 is especially helpful.
Tabs are (almost) all I need 😉
Hi Norbert,
Did you check out Michael’s reply to Joel above (September 12, 2026 at 9:37 am)?
I don’t have too much to add to that.
Definitely slow the track down (50% is a good start); loop 1-2 bars – the starting G chord bars 2-3; watch Brian’s hands; listen to the rhythm; try singing it with nonsense words or even lyrics (‘ti-tiki-TAK–ti-TAK–tee–Tack–taacky’). Try muting all the strings and just getting the general feel – where the emphasis is. Relax the right hand/wrist and try to keep it moving/flowing.
In finer detail – the slide in (ti-tiki) is a downstroke followed by a very faint upstroke, then down; the ‘TAK’s ‘tee’ & ‘Tack’ are all emphasised downstrokes; the ‘taacky’ is down/up; the muted bits are very quiet & can almost be ignored to begin with but they’re just maintaining the down/up rhythm.
That’s just bars 2-3, but once you’ve got that to a reasonable degree the rest of the track becomes ‘easier’. Nailing this ‘exactly’ as Brian plays it is a challenge (and isn’t really the main thrust of the lesson imho).
Hope that helps.
Thanks, Rob.
That might be good advice, but to be honest, I’m more into tabs. :)))
Brian, everytime I think you’ve amazed me for the last time, you do it again!! Outstanding lesson.
Brian, fun lesson. How about a pdf file like you did for ML150 . I like seeing the pentatonic shapes with the colored “notes” with 1,3,5,R(OOT) notes spelled out.
Enjoy your lessons. Constructive and informative.
I do have a question related to the CAGE system.
Some time back I learned the CAGE system and always referred to C as the first position.
You refer to G as the first position and build from there.
Did I learn it wrong?
It does throw me off every once and a while.
Keep up the good work and your enthusiasm for teaching!
Thank-you,
Richard
I hope this is the correct forum to post this!
Great Lesson; I keep wanting to go to the D7 chord to close it out.
Brian, you are right on the money with this style of lesson, thank you again for your generosity and unsurpassed creativity!
Great session ! Love the triads – a great alternative to the full barre Chords. Can you offer any ideas for stretching exercises – my pinky struggles on the embellishments
The best lesson on triads I’ve received so far.
It’s very motivating to take things further.
I’m looking forward to the next tutorial on the relationship with penta.
Thanks, Brian.
Providing fret board diagrams of the triads as they progress as well as chord diagrams with the embellishments would greatly improve an already excellent lesson.
It is difficult to find fret board diagrams that are printable on line
Lynne, the triad diagrams are on the title page and the last frame of the video
Yes I know ….but it would be nice to simply print a pdf instead of manually creating my own as a quick reference. I know that there are online tools for this and have looked into various apps but I don’t have the technical knowledge to use them efficiently. .
I would rather spend my time actually playing guitar instead of wasting time creating my own diagrams. Brian has the tools and knowledge to do this quickly. I am sure that other people of my generation have the same issues. We are not up to speed computer wise compared to the young folks out there.
Yeah, it would be nice to have a pdf with the CAGED chord diagrams to print out and pin to the wall but, if he put them in the sheet of music along with the tablature it would make every page longer, doubling the number of pages to print.
It would be cool to have a chord diagram popup whenever you hovered over a chord name in the online charts, though.
I love these sort of Micro Lessons and this is a very useful one, indeed. I’m just wondering if there’s a reason for avoiding the high-e string? Is it because you want us to learn where the roots are on strings 4, 3 & 2? Thanks.
Great lesson Brian thankyou. Have you given any thought to making a lesson involving being able to play the melody of a song you are singing, like a break in the song.this is my altimate goal.
Brian my last comment about playing the melody that you are singing I should have logged in as David E S as there is another David S with us.