Triads: the secret weapon to exploding your fretboard knowledge
It’s this easy to make your playing more interesting
This article is a personal one for me, because it’s information I wish I’d had many years ago. Learning this transformed my playing, as well as my understanding of the fretboard - and it will do the same for you.
For as long as I can remember, I would study guitarists if I saw them playing. Whether they were a session player on a talk show or someone I was watching live in person, I’d be looking at their hands and trying to work out what they were doing.
If they played a solo, I’d try to work out what scale they were playing or why they jumped from one end of the neck to the other. I’d make a mental note of the chords they were playing too.
But one thing confused me: when I saw them playing weird shapes along the fretboard. Clearly, they weren’t open chords. But they also weren’t barre chords.
Hmm. What are they?!
Nowadays, you can just hop onto YouTube and paste a link into a forum to get instant answers, but I grew up at an inflection point for learning the instrument: we had access to tablature in books and, later, online, but YouTube didn’t exist and video lessons were a long way off.
Eventually, I got my answer.
They were playing different chord voicings, and usually something called “triads”.
What are triads?
In my previous article on how chords are constructed, we looked at how specific notes are taken from the major scale and played together to make a chord.
A major chord uses the first, third, and fifth notes from the scale, while a minor chord uses the first, flattened third, and fifth notes from the scale.
Chords can include more notes, or repetition of a note, but a triad is when only three notes are played.
Here’s an E major chord played in the open position (image taken from ChordBank):
If you’re familiar with the chord already then you’ll know it’s played across six strings. But what you might not know is that it’s actually the same three notes, with duplicates:
The note E appears on the two open E strings and the D string.
The note B appears on the A string and the open B string.
The note G# appears on the G string.
So E is played three times, B twice, and G# once. Three notes, played over six strings.
If you play only those three notes, with no duplicates, you’re playing a triad.
The following image shows how you can play this E major triad all across the neck. The numbers are intervals, and the red dots represent the 1, 3, 5 of the triad. Every 1 is E, every 3 is G#, and every 5 is B:
Simply take any combination of 1, 3, 5, play only those three strings, and that’s a triad. The same notes, but depending on where you choose to play them on the neck and which order you play those intervals, they’ll sound different. (Note: Don’t think the 1 always needs to be the first note that you play. These can be played in any order e.g. 351, 513)
Here’s a very short demonstration of how to play E major in 18 places, using the shapes in the above image:
How to play triad shapes
If you look closely at the previous image of the fretboard you’ll see that the shapes join together.
For example, you can make the shape of a regular E major open chord but instead of playing the first fret of the G string, play the fourth fret on the low E string and you’ll be playing an E major triad with a different voicing.
First fret of the G string is the same note as fourth fret on the E string - a G# - but at a different pitch. The other two notes of the E chord stay in the same place. This is demonstrated in the following image, where we move the 3 from the G string to instead place it on the low E string:
You’ll see this for every shape: all you’re doing is removing the bottom note and placing it on top, so you play the same note but at a different octave.
And because you’re only playing the intervals 1, 3, and 5, you’re always on the same loop. Like this:
If the 3 is the lowest note, remove it and place it on the top and 1 will be the lowest note. Remove it and place it on top and 5 becomes the lowest note. Remove it and place it on top and 3 is the lowest note again.
This is why understanding triads unlocks so much of the fretboard!
Not only do you need to know where the root note is in order to play a chord there, but you’ll also learn how to locate a given interval from that root.
As the image and video above demonstrate, triads can be played with the root on any string, so they give you the freedom to play wherever you are on the neck. Instead of being restricted to the open position, or the root note on the E, A or D string for power chords, you can play anywhere - and even play the same triad multiple times in the same area of the fretboard!
How to use triads
Triads give you a lot of new opportunities. I’d recommend taking the time to familiarise yourself with how to play them, and experiment with some of the different shapes we’ve looked at so you can identify the various sounds available to you by simply changing where you play a triad.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to put them in a musical context. Here are some ideas:
Take a song you know and play it using triads instead of regular chords. (Bonus points for identifying how to play the chord progression with as little travel as possible - can you play it without moving your hand more than a couple of frets away?)
Use the voicings to build a song up: begin on the higher strings and save the heavier, low strings for a bridge, chorus or pre-chorus
If you’re in a band with another guitarist, use the triads to separate the two instruments. If they’re playing open or power chords, triads give you space and allow you to play a melody or lead line while cutting through the mix
For more on using triads in a musical way - and creating triads by taking open chords that you already know - check out my short lesson below: