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Blues Triad Mastery
(06 Sep 02)
Discussion: Why triads?
Why bother learning triads? What benefits do you get from learning chords with just three notes, when you could learn bigger, more colorful chords? There are lots of reasons to learn triads.
First, they make learning more complex chords easier. Visualizing a three note shape is easier than a four or five note shape, and visualizing the note *names* in a triad is also easier compared to chords with more than three notes.
And, if you haven't discovered this yet, you will learn that visualizing the many shapes that music takes on the fretboard is a crucial factor in making music well with the guitar. Learning triads help you achieve this visualization.
Don't trust just one source to learn the importance of triads. In guru William Leavitt's vital guitar reference, Modern Guitar Method, Volumes 1, 2 and 3, Leavitt gives triad exercises even in the advanced volumes 2 and 3.
This includes 8 separate exercises just in volume 2. That fact *alone* would make knowing triads seem important to me. On WholeNote.com, another important resource for guitarists, about 200 results come back when you enter "triads" in their search engine.
Triads are also important to know when you're reading slash chord notation. Once you know triad shapes well, these shapes will come readily to your mind's eye when you read "Cm/B" or a similar slash chord in sheet music.
To learn more about slash chords, check out this article on IBreatheMusic: Triads - The First Chords. Also, check out the Slash and Burn article on MaximumMusician.com.
For more triad chops:
Use the following checklists to show you which other strings and focus notes you'll want to create your own Blues triad progressions for. You can create your own progressions by transposing the two in this lesson.
Here's a checklist summary for all the triad progressions you'll want to learn using the by-string approach.
String E
String B
String G
String D
Here's the checklist for all the triad progressions you'll want to play using the target note approach:
E string: Notes F, A, and C
B string: Notes F, A, and C
G string: Notes F, A, and C
D string: Notes F, A, and C
Have fun with Blues Triad Mastery.
© 2002 Darrin Koltow
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Darrin Koltow is webmaster of MaximumMusician.com, which offers free guitar lessons, articles, ebooks with tabs and MIDI files, and links to other music sites.
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