This month’s lesson will focus on triads within a scale over various bass notes. note. Now if you don’t know your triads all over the neck in all forms then this will be an introduction with a future lesson that will be more comprehensive.

Triads are the building blocks of chords and the examples that follow will maybe open your ears to some more cool chords and voicings. In Ex.1 the open A string is played along with the triads from the C major scale on the top 3 strings. I did not show the name of each chord as more than one may exist depending on how the chords are used in a progression. In Ex. 2 we remain in C with an open E bass note under the all the triads in C but this time they are played on the second string set so some different inversions are used. Ex.3 is based in E with all the triads in E over an open E and also played on the second string set. Ex.4 is also in E but now the triads are being played on the third string set providing some rich tones. Ex.5 uses an E major triad on top while the scale tones of E are played on the low strings. Ex.6 is a C major triad at the 5^th fret with the C major scale being played on the low strings.

As you can see from the examples there are lots of different ways to play the chords from a major scale and next month we will take an in depth look at triads and where they are on the neck. Those 1001 guitar chord books are fine but once you know triads and how chords are made you’ll be amazed at how many you can come up with on your own.

See ya next month!

Jeff Wilde

Questions? Comments?

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