How to Practice Triads

Most guitarists practice plenty of scales and exercises, maybe even some arpeggios, on a daily basis. One of the often overlooked aspects of guitar study is the acquaintance with the triads across the fingerboard. Soon after I initiated my quest to discover the secrets hidden within the fretboard, I realized the importance of triads, the building block of common practice harmony.

My first instinct was to practice triads in conjunction with scales in every key (even the flat keys!). This quickly became an arduous process as each key has 7 triads, 3 inversions of each; there are 24 keys, and on top of that, 4 string sets (adjacent groupings of strings)! That's over 2,000 individual chords to play and doesn't even touch on the split voicings, in which strings are skipped. To practice this everyday is way too ambitious and leaves no time to play MUSIC!

My light-bulb moment was when one of my guitar professors at school handed out a glorious sheet on triads to the students. It starts out with C-Major in 2nd inversion on strings 1, 2, and 3, and proceeds to move up to root position, then 1st inversion, all on the same strings. The plot twist is, instead of returning down the neck with the same chords, it switches to F-Major at the top. Then the F-Major triads are played in a descending manner such as root position, 2nd inversion, 1st inversion. After that, Bb-Major inversions are played ascending. This process repeats around the circle of 5ths until you get to C-Major again, when you will switch to strings 2, 3, and 4 and start over at C-Major.



This is an economical way of playing all the triads over the neck without repeating any. Since this exercise is based around the circle of 5ths, you'll notice smooth voice leading between chords that resembles the resolution of a dominant chord. For instance, if you look at the 3rd beat of the example above, the lowest pitch, e, is the leading tone to the upcoming F-Major chord.

I recommend practicing triads like this for all guitarists, regardless of genre. After you master the major ones, you can try it with minor, diminished, and augmented. It's a good way of warming up both your hands and your brain, and after much practice, you'll be able to play all of the triads in every inversion in less than 10 minutes! They will help you with your sightreading and larger understanding of the music you are playing.


Here I play all of the major triads on all 4 string sets.

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