Play like a PRO with these 3 Triad positions - Guitar Lesson - EP574

all right well I'm excited about this week's lesson because I can already anticipate that this is going to be a breakthrough for a lot of you and if you're struggling with sounding the same like everything you do sort of sounds the same or it sounds like you're just playing up and down scales you're going to totally love this lesson because it'll make you sound better and it's easy to implement I'm talking about Triads by the way and I wish somebody had sat down and showed me this when I was learning how to play cuz once I discovered it it completely changed the way that I played and sounded and it's not hard that's the best part about it so I've got this lesson split into two parts in this video we're going to go through the first half where we talk about Triads and how to find them I'll show you the three positions we're going to be talking about if you'd like to join us for part two where we talk about embellishments that you can play off the Triads as well as the tablature for everything and the MP3 Jam track so that you can practice playing everything we're going to talk about you can get those things by going to activemelody.com go to the weekly lessons page and do a search for EP 574 okay so what is is a Triad I can answer that in about 10 seconds it's a three note chord that's it it's a chord you play you take three notes you play them in unison and you're playing a Triad and you you can have major Triads and minor Triads and different variations but and we're going to be talking about both major and minor in this but uh those notes are made up of the major scale so that's where they come from so if you play the first note the third note and the fifth note of your major scale you play them in unison you're playing a major Triad now if you play the first and you flat the third and play the fifth so one flat three five you're playing a minor chord that's all a minor chord is you just flat the third interval and so the thing about Triads that uh confused me there's two things one is when I first learned how to play them they seem to be everywhere there's Triads all over the fretboard how in the heck are you going to memorize all of those and so there was this overwhelm that happened immediately but I'm going to break this down into three container and make this super simple I'm going to give you the Swiss army knife of of Triads as we get into this and so so there's that the other thing that confused me was um the whole fact that if you're playing a chord you're playing three notes but when I would play a chord like a G chord I'd go well I'm playing six notes 1 2 3 4 5 six across Six Strings right well the truth is I'm still only playing three notes when I play that chord I but some of the notes repeat so when I'm playing a G chord like that I'm playing a g a b and a d and then the next note is a g a b they're just an octave higher and then another G on top so in actual fact I'm still only playing three unique notes when I play that chord some of them are octaves on top of each other and so that was kind of a revelation when I realized that same is true with minor chords just remember the minor chords have a flat three all right so now let's get into these three containers that we're going to put these Triads in and these come from the cage system by the way we're going to look at the E container the C container and the a container I'll put all five cage system lessons up if you want to do a deep dive into each of them you can do that uh just go to active Melody and search for any of those but we're going to start off with the E container I'm going to play a G chord using my e shape right now inside of that if I in fact if I were to just play strings 4 3 and two these three notes that's a Triad that's one of the Triads within that e shape and so I'm going to call that my lower Triad and then I'm going to give you an upper Triad on top of that so that's what we're going to do for each container so in actual fact there will be a total of six Triads and the thing you need to know about this Triad are the note numbers so that is my one sometimes we call that our root this is the third and that's the fifth 1 3 5 you'll see why you need to know them in a in a minute but just remember that's my one that's my G note so that note tells me the name of this Triad so that's a little light bulb for somebody okay okay got it g note G Triad a note a Triad a major chord um okay so back to our G so that's the the lower Triad on top of that we have the top three notes out of this e container it looks like this now this there's a little bar here this is easy to do bar the first two strings on the third fret and then we take our middle finger and play on the fourth fret third turn so that's also a g Triad so we have a g Triad here and then we have one here now the difference between these two you can tell they sound a little different is the order of the notes so we've there's an inversion that happens there and the notes have changed order so now the bottom note is our third interval I say bottom meaning the lowest note in Pitch that's our third interval that's our fifth interval and then the one is on top so that's our G note so that means this note tells me the name of this Triad so if I were to play this note up here that's a b note therefore if I made this Triad I'm making a B major chord right so let's get back to our G so we have our upper Triad and then we have our lower Triad now as I said you can flat the third interval to get a minor chord so 1 3 5 there's the three to Flat one and we just go down a fret so we play that note we still keep our one and our five exactly the where where they were though so now it sounds like this you can tell it sounds minor it's got that sad kind of sound right so that's a Minor triad uh kind of the the lower Triad in that e shape and then up here on the top that's our third interval right so we're going to Flat that again just like we did and then we can play and look how easy that is one finger that's a one finger chord doesn't get any better than that so we have a the bottom Minor triad and the upper Minor triad so that's what we have so far now big deal right so you got these two Triads now what can you do with it well we can already start to use just that information so if I were to play a 145 for [Music] example see what I'm doing there I'm playing this try and then I come up here and play the four chord using that shape so instead of me playing my C chord here which is where you would do that uh I'm using that e shape I'm using the E container to hit each of those chords so so I can play the top part for each now it sounds kind of boring and Bland but it's going to get better as we start to add to this so that's the first little thing is this e shape now let's move on to the next shape which is our C shape so we're still going to stick with the G chord all we need are these three and the way that I do that is I bar now I realize not everybody can bar so you you can play this without the bar but I bar here on the seventh fret first four strings and then then I've got ninth fret fourth string and then my middle finger on the eighth fret second string and I play strings 4 3 and 2 So within the C shape or the C container this is my lower Triad and listen to those notes they're exactly the same as these just in a different position so we have [Music] this now the upper Triad in this container looks like this so that's the same shape as my D chord in first position exactly the same shape I'm but if I play it up here I'm playing a G chord now the thing I forgot to mention are the note names or the intervals and so when I'm playing this lower Triad this is my third this is my fifth and this is my first same as this third fifth first but when I'm playing this upper Triad I have the fifth interval the first interval and the third interval so it's yet another inversion of that same chord so now we've got right and it's just we're just moving on up the fretboard so the minor uh shapes in this position we flat the third there's my third we go down one and you just play it like that that would be my Minor triad in this C position and we do the same thing for this upper Triad we take our third interval and we just lower it one so now we have that now that should look familiar because if you think of your D chord in first position and then your D minor chord hopefully this is you're starting to see that oh yeah we're just flatting the third when we play that like it it helps you kind of see what's going on so now we're doing it up here same thing all right so that's our e shape and our C- shape now let's come up to the a shape and look at what we can do with Triads up here now this first Triad we'll start with a lower Triad which will be here but look at this it's one another one finger deal so this one's super easy now the way that you would actually make if you playing the the full chord out of this is that you would include this note but if we're just playing the Triad that's all you need to do is just play those three notes strings Four 3 and two and I'm barring on the 12th fret there those are the same notes by the way as these notes and remember the order of the notes Here were the fifth the first and the third same is true up here fifth first and third so this is my G note that tells me the name of this Triad and that's my third interval we can flat the third interval to get the minor chord right so and that looks like my a minor shape in first position and by the way look at that let's look at our a it's look I'm using one finger are you seeing the oh yeah yeah there's my a chord down here and there's 's my a minor I'm doing the same thing just up here right it's the same principle and so the top Triad in this container looks like this and so that's I always refer to that as the top part of my a shape but that top Triad looks like that and those notes by the way that's the first on the third string that's the third and that's the fifth it's exactly the same as this the one we started with it's just the full octave higher now and to play the minor version of this Triad remember we just flat the third so we come down here and now we're playing this notice that's a little stair step you've heard me talk about that in in other lessons the stair step shape that Minor triad well now you can kind of maybe think about that different okay it's coming out of this you're just flatting the third and that's that's where that's uh originating I guess so now what I want to do is I want to play along with a jam trck we're going to start to pull all of this together now these are the chords in the Jam track G B minor C and D these are all chords in the chord family of the key of G and what I'm going to do is I'm going to start off U using just the E shape the E container we're going to play those chords uh without the jam J I just want you to hear this on its own and we're going to play the lower Triad across uh those four chords so sound like this there's my B minor [Music] C up to a d remember this note is my D note that's my D Triad okay so let's do the upper ones there's the B minor there's a c there's my D now notice I kind of slide into those first little tip there you know you can kind of slide into the notes to kind of or the chords to give you that U little you it's a little more thought out sound I guess when you hear that um so so you can see that I'm playing all over the fretboard when I do that let's be more efficient about it let's do this there's my G there's my B minor look at that the stair step shape that I just talked about I'm playing it here how do I know that's a b Minor triad well there's my B note on that third string on the fourth fret now if I were to think about the container this is in there's my B container using the a shape okay there's the lower Triad that we talked about and then here's the upper one you flat the third okay so all the things we talked about down here I'm just kind of going through that so that you can see that that Triad is here now why did I pick that instead of jumping up here well it's real close so it just makes it easy and and you can start start to seamlessly connect the notes when you're playing your your chords or your lead this is the key to the thing check this out G to my B minor now I realize I'm just arpeggiating the chord but I'm doing that just because we don't have the Jam track yet but you can you you can see what's going on now let's go to the C look at that there's my C chord c chord using the a shape there's the lower Triad there's the upper Triad ah where's my D chord then in this neighborhood I've got two options I can go up two Frets and play it here or I can go down here and play it so for my C I can [Music] go back to the [Music] G now let's do it up here let's go g to the C now watch this here's my D look at that there's the D chord using the a shape there's that little Triad do you see what's happening there I'm able to in each of these positions I'm able to go through all the chords there and I could do any chord by the way these are just four random ones but it doesn't matter you're the chord you're looking for is all is never more than one fret from where you're at I'll put that lesson up on the screen if you want to see what I'm talking about um so anyway we can come up to this position now and play those same [Music] chords All right so now that we have that let me play along with a Jam track and I'll put up on the screen which Triad position that I'm using so that you can even pause the video if you need to and just kind of work it out but I want you to be able to see what's going on and this is just a very simple way of playing there's not a lot of embellishments it's really just playing through the chords [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so I'm I'm able to take any those positions and play all four chords within that position and I can also go up and down this way so I can go like this now I realized I'm doing some little embellishments now I'm going to talk about all of those embellishments in the part two video so I'm saving that for for the second uh part so here's where it starts to get really cool to me is the fact that you've now got major and minor chord uh Triads that you can play all over the fretboard so if youve got a song that you're working on and you want to play the chords in different spots you've got these easy little Triads they're easy to play they're not like cumbersome big bar chords or anything they're just super uh elegant and simple to play and if you want it to sound a little higher you just come up the fretboard and find the version of it up up there or or vice versa so you can go down or up the fretboard but where it gets really cool is if you start integrating these Triads into what you already play so if you play major scale stuff or let's say you're a pentatonic player maybe you're a blues player and you want to work in some of these Triads into your Blues well now you could take your your your minor pentatonic scale for example and go well there's that little Triad right [Music] [Music] now what I did there you know that little harmonize six I came up to this Triad just played strings two and uh [Music] four there's my C right because I was in that neighborhood now I'm not getting into all the embellishments I am going to save that for the part two video but I just wanted to kind of point that out that you can use this in anything this information it's not limited to just a chord chart or something that's you know you where you have to arpeggiate chords you can just take your pentatonics and play those around these Triads just kind of work them in into your playing it will make your playing sound a lot better and those are like Target notes they're perfect notes to land on in your in your lead stuff so see what you can do with that if you like this lesson leave a comment below I always appreciate uh comments uh whether you've uh been confused by something actually leave me that comment too because I'll try and clarify in future material or if you just enjoyed it maybe you've had a breakthrough I appreciate learning that all right we'll see you in the part two video where we'll go over the Embellishments

Channel: Active Melody

Views: 85,166

Keywords: triad guitar lesson, triads guitar, guitar triad, CAGED System, CAGED System guitar lesson, guitar lesson, guitar lessons, music education, guitar education, brian sherrill, activemelody.com, activemelody, active melody

Id: CRj3d11jzRw

Length: 19min 22sec (1162 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 22 2024