How to (Easily) Play Triad Chords on Guitar

hey how you doing justin here today we are going to be checking out e shape major and minor triads with the thinnest string root it couldn't sound more dry and boring but this is cool i still remember learning this i must have been about 13 or 14 playing in a band we were doing brown eyed girl and the other guitar player in the band john was a little bit older than me and he showed me how to play the triads and moving up and down and it was like oh man this is the coolest thing ever and i was doing mostly league guitar in that band it just made when i was doing the rhythm parts i could kind of lead a fight a little bit it was just great every time i jammed after that i'd always be jumping on these triads and they're really simple if you've learned your e-shape major and minor chords already your bar chords it won't be difficult to do and it really does sound incredible particularly if you're jamming with somebody who's using open chords you can slide these little major and minor chords around they they just sound wicked so let's get to a close-up check out what they are and then we'll talk a little bit more about how to use them so here's your big e shape major chord it's at the fifth fret so this is an a major chord now when we're talking about triads we're talking about three note chords now this is only got three notes but a lot of them are doubled what i'm talking about here is using just three notes and we're talking about these ones the thinnest three strings so instead of playing all of this you might just want to play this so the first finger is on the root note which is on the thinnest string then you play in the second string as well and second finger is going to go one fret higher than your first finger and you're just going to play those three notes just the thinnest three strings you would normally pick these notes out you wouldn't strum with triads you kind of can but it's a little bit more complicated so what we're talking about here is playing the notes individually and picking them out now that was a major grip this is the root note this is the fifth this is the third can you think of how we might change this major grip into a minor grip what was the note that we had to lower by a semitone to change a major chord into a minor chord it was the third so this was the root this was the fifth this is the third so all we have to do is and there we've got our minor chord look at that so that would be an a minor chord there's the big one there's just the little version those three notes major minor this was the third this was the fifth this was the root now hopefully you know that the outside two strings are both the same so that this is an e that's an e that's an a that's an a so if i want a major chord let's say i want a c major triad i'm thinking well c that was here at the eighth fret so i'm just going to put my first finger on the eighth fret second finger goes up one fret above there's c and if i want to go to a g i'm thinking well there's the the third fret that would be my g so i'm going to move my first finger down to the third fret [Music] there's a g back to the c [Music] if i wanted an a minor i'm thinking well there's the a at the fifth fret the minor grip was all in a line so there's a minor there's c [Music] g a minor [Music] f now i'm doing this little picking pattern it's a little bit arbitrary i'm going third string second string first string second string third string just straight up and down but i'm using this one two and three and four one two and three and four one two and three and four one two and three and four it's old faithful strumming pattern this down down up up down one two and three and four but now i'm going one two and three and four one two and three and four but you could do any picking out of the note patterns you like that's just a a nice very very common uh approach to picking out the notes of a triad memorizing the shapes shouldn't be difficult you've only got two you've got this one for major this one for minor locating them on the fretboard shouldn't be that difficult either although you'll probably find when you take the rest of the big bar chord away it looks a little different so it might take a little bit of practice to get used to where you have to move the chords around to but it won't take you that long okay and it is really such a cool trick so let's talk a little bit about how they use so the first one i want to explain is this idea of using it when somebody else is doing the strum and so you're having a jam with somebody they're playing some strumming chords and you want to play with them but you don't want to just play them the same chords you could play the barre chords but very often having the big barre chords and the open chords together it's a little bit too much and you're likely to strum them the same and it just can all get a little bit tangled together so using triads it's a really really tasteful way of doing that so i'm going to pick on that chord progression like the most common chord progression of all time c g a minor f just because it's really common but you could use any chord progression you like so i've got a little looper here on the floor so i'm just going to play that chord progression now uh i always play once through anyway before i even start the looper okay and then we start and stop now the progression was c g a minor to f so c is up here at the eighth fret [Music] g third fret a minor fifth fret down to f [Music] [Music] you don't have to play lots of arpeggios you can just play the notes or you could just strum now i meant to play it on the beat then but i was a little bit late because i'm thinking about teaching and filming making sure everything stayed in focus all of that so i went one two three four one two three four like it's late every time that's okay you can also do chips [Music] so i'm playing the chords nice and short now that sounds particularly great with a clean electric guitar a little bit of delay and reverb [Music] just experiment it's it's just such a such a useful little trick this one it really sounds great if you learn to play these chords nice and short so just like play the chord press it down and then lift it up immediately afterwards and mute it with the pick in the hand as well so that one two three four one three one three one three two three four nice little bit of a reggae thing going on this is the d so i'm playing d you might do something like b flat a minus back to d minor so there's another really good example where you're just using this little chord grip uh moving it around to follow the song particularly if you've got a bass player that's like holding it down the triads can be really useful for that sort of thing as well so trying to like a a great tool that you can use for jamming with other guitar players like the the most common version of this is having a strumming acoustic guitar and then a clean electric guitar picking out those triads uh you know sounds divine there are lots of different ways of playing triads so we've just looked at one major and one minor one but there's lots of different ones again it's stuff that we're going to cover a little bit later in the course as well but to start off with these are the most useful ones and i think you should be able to get going with them pretty quick because you know the root notes on the thickest string therefore you know the notes on the thinnest string there's only a major shape there's only a minor shape off you go try and apply it to a song have a jam with somebody if you haven't got somebody that you can jam with use a looper pedal pick a chord progression strum the open chords and then figure out where those triad grips are going to be and have a go at playing them it's it really is an amazing thing to get together at first most people find it a bit of a struggle to jump to the new chords and find them quickly enough but that's just down to practice and the more different songs you do and the more you get used to just jumping to the chord and go oh what a d minor oh there it is okay i want an f sharp major i want a b flat minor and you can just go name the chord and then grab to the shape straight away that's just a practice thing it's just going to take time doing as many different songs as you can jamming as much as you can you know if you're not doing it already playing with another human working with another musician learning from each other playing together learning to feel the music together you learn a lot together as well like everyone learns different things and gets comfortable with different things sooner so like you might be finding this moving the triads around real simple but they're really struggling with the time and you can help each other you know so yeah getting together with another musician actually put this stuff into practice is something that i think is something really valuable that i strongly recommend you get into right at this minute we're just coming out of the covered crisis who knows you might be watching this video in 10 times and this will be ancient history but you know maybe there's been a new one and there's another reason why people can't hang out who knows but uh yeah trying to find another musician to work with on this stuff is going to be a great thing so that concludes the end of our e-shape barre chord module hopefully you're familiar with the e shape major the e shape minor the e shape seven you're hit with the note function of all of the notes in that e shape and you've had a bit of fun with the triads putting it into practice for the song if you're doing the practice routine thing again you just want to assign a five-minute slot to doing your try practical application of the triads to some songs it's the best way to learn it you don't i think many people are going to need to practice actually playing those shapes because they're pretty simple especially if you've got your big bar chords down already so that would be your practice routine information but really before you move on i want you to consolidate make sure you've got all of the stuff that we've covered in this module down and that you're comfortable and happy with it the next stage along when we look at the a shape bar chords they're just technically a little bit trickier to do the minor version is actually really simple which is good news but the major one causes a quite a few problems for most people when they encounter it did for me i always found it difficult so that's the reason i'm emphasizing this e shape first is to really get it solid under your fingers before you move on to the a shape give your muscles a chance to strengthen before we tackle the a shape one that's the reason if you're feeling super hip with all of this it would be okay to move directly onto the next module if you want and check out the a shape if you're slightly worried about it don't be in a hurry you're much better off having a few skills that you can do really well and feel really confident with and be able to use them to make music than having lots of skills that you've kind of half learned that you can't really put into a practical application yet i don't think that's a good idea so don't be worried about spending a bit of time three four weeks a month a couple of months really consolidating these uh e-shaped grips before you move on to doing anything you i really hope you're enjoying the course do let me know your feedback in the comments if you're on youtube or on the comments on the website i do tend to check out the website a little bit more often if you're ever on youtube of course really appreciate that subscribe and the like and i would say it every time it gets a bit boring but you know it really makes a big difference to the channel if you do those things for me let me know you know chatting to me in the comments getting engaged all of that sort of stuff yeah you know do let me you know come find me on social media as well i'm over on instagram and facebook and all of that so uh trying to keep pretty active on all of those places so love to get your feedback i'd love to see some videos of you guys doing this stuff and you know let me know how you're getting on with the courses so i can you know what ways i can make it better what other tools that you'd like me to to give you uh always trying to improve my game so if you can help me by letting me know what struggles you're facing that just makes everything better so uh yeah really hope you enjoyed it i'll see you for plenty more very soon you'll take care of yourselves out there bye-bye

Channel: JustinGuitar

Views: 576,681

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Id: qWS22cV9REg

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021