Triadic Chord Structures part 1

Triadic Chord Structures part 1


I'm going to show you some musical theory, but I'm going to make
it so simple, that you'll be amazed at how easy this stuff is. It
all depends on how its delivered to you. I'm going to keep it
really simple. I have devised a way for any guitarist to understand
this.

1. First of all, you have one note. Simple. A note is a note. One, uno - no more no less.

2. two notes stacked together, are not quite a chord. They are referred to as an interval, but we will use this term loosely, because there are many sub-forms of intervals.

3. A chord is three notes or more.

4. A chord containing three notes is a triadic chord, hence triad (3).

A three note triadic chord has four structures that are very easy to form. They flow in this order:

a) Major triad or basic triad
b) Minor triad
c) Diminished triad
d) Augmented triad.

A Major triad is the "mother" of these structures. The major triad contains the following notes of a major scale. The 1st note (known as a tonic - the "root" note), the 3rd note and the 5th note.

Simply put, if we wanted to make a G major triadic chord, we would build it from the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the G major scale. So G would be our 1st note.

I don't want to give you too much information at once, so I'm going to make this entry a two-parter. In the next section, I will show you the G Major scale and how to find these notes. I will then show you in that section, how to flat or sharp the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes accordingly, in order to create a Minor triad, Diminished triad and Augmented triad. its very, very easy. For now, I want you to take this information and temporarily forget about it.

I have compiled two sections of notation below. The first section shows you all of the major triadic chords, starting with the G Major triad. It spans an octave, ending on the next G Major triad.

The 2nd section shows you all of the Minor triadic chords, starting with the G Minor triad. This too, spans an octave. Starting with the major triad chord section, finger the chords and play all of them, one at a time. Repeat this process several times. You will find, that the pattern is the same. You do not need to alter your fingering.
You will only have to slide the fingering up a fret at a time.

Memorize this pattern.

Next, move on to the Minor triadic chords. You will see that the pattern is almost identical. Only one note is altered. Play all of these chords several times through. Memorize THIS pattern. Go back and forth between playing the major triads and the minor triads, comparing the structures of the patterns.





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