Basic Triads

Here we have the Major and Minor triads!

The major triad consists of a root note, with the Major 3rd and Perfect 5th intervals played on top.

The minor triad consists of a root note, with the Minor 3rd and Perfect 5th intervals played on top.

So, we can see that they only differ by one note. Maybe that's no surprise to you, since the E and Em open chords also only differ by one note!

All those open chord shapes you've learned so far really come back to these simple triads. They're all just 3 notes.

For example, the E open chord shape, consists of the following notes:

EBEGBE

That's right, it's just E, B, and G. If you start the Major Triad shape as seen here with the root note on the 12th fret of the low E, you'll get those same notes. E, B, and G.

This goes for all Major and Minor chord shapes. No matter how you slice it, if you look at what notes you are playing, it will always come back to just 3: A Root Note, a Perfect 5th, and either a Major or Minor 3rd.

Here we have the Suspended 2nd and Suspended 4th Triads.

More commonly, you'll see these written and referred to as Sus2 and Sus4 chords.

As you can see, we've dropped the 3rd in the triad, and replaced it with either a Major 2nd, or a Perfect 4th.

If you know the intervals for the Major and Minor Scales, then you know that both scales have a Major 2nd and a Perfect 4th!

(If you didn't, take a quick look now at the Minor Scale and see how it uses a Major 2nd.)

Since the notes of the Sus2 and Sus4 can fit into either the Major or Minor Scales, these chords aren't explicitly in either scale, and can be used with both!

That means, for example, an Asus2 and Asus4 can be played along with an A Major chord, OR an A Minor chord.

You won't often play a suspended chord with these triad shapes, but it's important to understand how they're constructed, so we can understand where to use them later on.

CLICK HERE to learn about how to use Suspended Chords in more detail!

These last two are the Diminished, and Augmented Triad.

Diminished and Augmented are really just fancy words for flattened and sharpened, respectively.

If you have a close look at the Diminished Triad, you can see that it's just a Minor Triad, with the Perfect 5th flattened. That gives us a Tritone, instead.

This new shape gives us a dissonant, tense sound.

On the other hand, the Augmented Triad is like a Major Triad, except we've sharpened the Perfect 5th. One fret up from a Perfect 5th gives us a Minor 6th.

This is an odd sound. I'd describe it as having an unsettling dream-like quality, or almost a sci-fi feeling.

I've also heard the Augmented Triad called the "James Bond Chord", as it finds use in the soundtracks for those movies, where it's used to create a sense of mystery and intrigue.

You won't hear much of these triads on the radio, but the Diminished Triad does have it's place. If you want to learn more about where that is:

CLICK HERE to get started learning about Diatonic Chords!