Lesson 3: Major Triads - Sing it with me! "I LOVE THEORY!!"

[jem7vwh]

Lesson 3: Major Triads
Prerequisite: Lesson 2
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OK, this should prove a simple tutorial on how to construct your basic Major Triad, or Chord. *In order to build a triad we need two pieces of information. *We need the name of the chord, such as C Major, or D Major, and we need the notes of the the corresponding scale. *For a major triad we need the note and the major scale. *So to create a C Major triad, we've already decided that the root note is C. *Then the C Major scale (as covered in Lesson 2) is C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C.

Now that we have our two basic pieces of information, to construct the chord we pull out three pieces of that scale. *The Root, the 3rd, and 5th. *These three notes make up a C Major Triad. *There are much more complex versions of chords where you would use as many as 7 notes, however, most guitar chords use 3 or 4 notes from the scale. *Now our task is to find a place on the fretboard where we can conveniently find all three of these notes. *The letters in the parenthesis next to the numbers indicate which note is created. *Notice that C, E, & G are included in this triad.


--
--
-0- (g)
-2- (e)
-3- (c)
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While this is a good start, you will rarely see this chord in a song. *More often you will see this:

-0- (e)
-1- (c)
-0- (g)
-2- (e)
-3- (c)
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What people do is just use more strings, but the same notes. *Notice that this bigger chord has no new notes in it, it just has two different strings playing C and E. *That's ok too. *As long as you've got your Root, 3rd and 5th, you'll be fine. * *You can find these chords elsewhere also. *But as long as they all have a C,E, G they're all C Major Triads. *This of course works for any key (A-G) so try some of your own. *A final word of advice: *Many teachers will tell you this is a rule (remember there are no rules in theory, just suggestions), but it's usually more listenable if you make the lowest pitch in the triad the root note.

As an example, let's build an E major triad.
E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D#, E
so E, G#, B make up a E Major triad.

-0 (e)
-0 (b)
-1 (g#)
-2 (e)
-2 (b)
-0 (e)

OK, class dismissed! *PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!