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i want to share my latest thinking on this topic - as much for my benefit as any one else's. its taken well over twenty years to get as clear as this about the hard-core of the work.
i hope it helps
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the bridge between harmony construed in abstraction from the way any particular instrument works, and the neck of the guitar is this:
to play a triad on the guitar you can arrange things so that each note (c,e,g etc. etc.) falls on a different but adjacent string. this is crucial because a triad arranged on the neck this way is incredibly easy to play using a sweeping pick pattern - it is easy to play c;e;g as one downstroke.
now if you add a chord tone or scale tone or chromatic tone before and after the triad you have a phrase - and the point is - a phrase that can be incredibly easy to play on the guitar, such that it allows for effortless picking and - if you want - very very fast playing. the most obvious way to play these triads is as a single down stroke going from low (pitch) to higher pitch. you can quite easily concoct long phrases by stitching these triad based phrases together with chromatic links etc. etc.
which triads?
to get the sound of c maj you need to unpack the triads that are built into the sound - doing this will give you access not only to the fundamental sounds of c maj but also to the extended sounds of c maj too:
C - E - G / E - G - B /G - B - D/ B - D - F/ (C - E - G)
this sound is also the sound of A min (put an A before the first C) and - if you like - its got the sound of E min too - but its best to start with to think of it as the c maj sound. if you want to think of the maj sound as a 4 sound rather than a 1 sound then the F in the final triad will become an F#. you can also use this #11 sound as part of the major sound when its functioning as a tonic rather than as a sub-dominant.
you need to find these triads all over the neck of the guitar. you can play them with the lowest of the three notes on the four thickest strings on the guitar (because you can't arrange an ascending triad on different adjacent strings starting from either the B or the high E string).
one of the really great things about this picture (the bridge i mentioned above) is that because you HAVE to arrange the triads on adjacent strings the fingering patterns are just non-negotiable - they demand to be mapped out on the neck in a particular way.
i very strongly encourage adding a tone before and after the triad so you get a whole phrase (or phrase-fragment) to work with - and playing the triad as a triplet is v. good too - though you should also play all 8ths or 16ths too. you have to know where the bar lines are (or where '1' is) and make sure everything is sitting as it should on the bar.
the next most fundamental sound is the melodic minor - and you need to learn all the triads built into that sound too.
C-Eb-G; Eb-G-B; G-B-D; B-D-F; (C-Eb-G)
if you learn where these two sets of triads fall all over the neck - and you learn all the different uses of the two 'master' sounds - there's almost no harmonic detail of the music you can't capture with these two sound-families.
i also practice 8 note major/minor scales and 8 note melodic minor scales 'behind' these triads. but these you have to make up the fingerings yourself - so its easy to mess it up. the fingerings - i think - should make execution fluid and easy (they should not be designed to be memorable first and playable second but the other way round).
Garrison Fewell videos on you tube will help get these balls rolling for you.
e.g.
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01-12-2016 02:54 PM
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What are we trying to accomplish here? Why? What is the musical goal? I'm kinda lost.
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well i'm not going to be able to help if you have no idea of what the point of any of it might be
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Triads are on my list for someday. Is fewell's book entry level somewhat with regard to triad usage? Working triads is something I would probably put on the back burner forever, but the technical advantages mentioned are kind of like a 2-for-1. Nice kind of "but wait, there's more" add-on.
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Carol Kaye stresses triads in her teaching. That's the first thing she teaches, the "chordal scale" in triads (F Gm Am Bb C7 Dm Emb5) and then in 7ths. Many idiomatic jazz runs are made with triads in succession, ascending or descending.
Another thing she teaches which is very useful is this. Say we're playing over G7. You have GBD BDF DFA FAC and so on. (The third and fifth of the first triad are the first and third of the next one. It's very easy to do. You can run this through a few octaves, ascending or descending. And you need not start on the "root" triad. Once you get that down, you can reverse the order, or go up one and down the next, and so on... It's an easy---and effective---way to generate motion in the break at the end of the head where you have a few beats---maybe a measure or more---where the band is silent and you start rolling and they all fall in the next "one".
Then you have 7ths: up G maj 7 down Am7 up Bm7 down C7.... Very basic exercise yet the root of much actual music!
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well exactly mgt
i have found that playing a series of phrases that use the four triads built into the main sound is - oh - a thousand times more musically useful than playing lots of arpeggios with different names (maj 7th;maj 9th; maj 13th etc. etc.). you get a whole sound at the heart of a phrase, not just a note or two added to the same old home-triad.
and the pure musical advantages are not all you get - oh no
you get serious fretboard facility advantages too - if you find these little things all over the neck and embed them in little proto-phrases (of a kind the music is just littered with) you transform your knowledge of the neck AND add a huge bank of super-easy-to-execute-at-tempo phrases to your bag (man)
the improvement in speed is outrageous - because all these triads are just the easiest things to play in the world - and when you add bits either side of them - you develop phrases that can be spat out at very very high tempos very easily
and to go back to the pure musical advantages
structuring your line (man) by using triads is the most musical way to go - the GREAT danger is getting bogged down in scalar type runs that sound - well - poor. the triads bring oxygen (air) to your playing - and most guitarists need as much of that as they can get. (this is fewell's main thing - or was - poor sod)
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Matt,
Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
I don't know what you're working on or what your long and short term goals are but triads are the fundamental building blocks of music. There is a reason that George Van Eps, Johnny Smith and Garrison Fewell, among many others, have stressed the importance of triads. Everything from Bach to bebop can be more easily understood if one understands triads and can play them.
Since the publication of Fewell's first book, I have used this book in my teaching and have recommended it to anyone who is looking for a well thought out, easy to understand method for understanding what mainstream jazz guitar is all about. If you are looking to play swing, bebop, hard bop or soul-jazz, GF's books will give you the fundamental information you need to to understand and play the music on guitar. He even delves lightly in the first book on how to apply the information to playing post-bop/modal jazz. His second book teaches how to combine the information from the first book with lines derived from scalar sources in such a way that you won't sound like you're running scales.
If you spend just a few months with Fewell's first book, A Melodic Approach, you'll be able hear and, more importantly, understand what players like Wes Montgomery were doing.
This post is already long enough so pretend that I also said everything above about George Van Eps in regard to learning triads for understanding the harmonic potential of the guitar.
Regards,
Jerome
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Always found triads somewhat mind-numbing to work on until recently. Started putting together simple chord melodies of non jazz tunes, just reading through, and they're surprisingly mentally freeing. I always assumed it was somewhat the opposite. Anyway learning simple tunes was a way for me to map them out. May have to check out Fewell's work in coming months for some jazz application. Thanks.
You seem particularly interested lately in things which are idiomatic to the instrument. Did you see the Martino (I think; maybe someone else) article on organizing the fretboard around symmetrical chord forms - diminished and augmented? Basically, toward looking at the guitar less like a piano and more the way it's actually laid out. I thought it was interesting at least.
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Yes, triads and spread triads ( don't forget spread triads) and their inversions should be learned everywhere on the neck. But I find that triads on strings 234 are particularly useful. When I learn a tune, I learned how to voice lead all the chords as TRIADS either in the key or in the tune on strings 234 from the nut to the 12th fret, encompassing the root position, first inversion and second inversion .
Triads are particularly useful there because you can add the first string as a melody note. Or, move the individual voices around: the fifth becomes the sixth or seventh, the root becomes a ninth, the third becomes suspended, etc.
I just took a college piano class. The only thing we learned in the first semester was triads triads and more triads. Especially the movement I (53) to IV (64) to V (65, with the fifth omitted ).
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Cool thread (I'm a triad nerd).
I use them a little differently then it looks like GF was organizing them. A few difference, but similar in principle, in the sense that the triad seems to be at the center of the puzzle.
So helpful. The more I devote myself to working with them, the more all the aspects of my music seem to improve (improv, composition, arranging, chords, etc). I think of them like the DNA of music. They permeate everything, they're completely adaptable, and they breathe life into the sound.
I was getting so much out of triad studies that about a year ago, I essentially stopped thinking about, practicing, or using scales. It's to the point that I now navigate the fretboard using triads rather than scale positions.Last edited by jordanklemons; 01-13-2016 at 03:15 PM.
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Triads are far less clunky, less heavy and give you so much mobility. adaptability , and malleability, to go from a three note voicing to instantly a single line or intervals; creating movement by linking triads with single notes, moving simultaneously and cohesively.
They open up and reveal the entire fingerboard to you at once, as one, inter-related cohesive unit, not just constituent and independent frets positions or string sets.
I'm not even talking about the really complex stuff that you find in the v Eps or Goodrick books, clusters etc.
I am just talking about major, minor, augmented, and diminished; root, first inversion, 2nd inversion; closed or spread triads.
That's the stuff I've worked on and tried to internalize. I feel like it's finally coming to mean something . At some point in the future, I'll tackle the Goodrick and tim Miller book. That is still above my pay grade. But I feel like if I don't have the fundamentals internalized, it will be of little use .
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I love them too ..
Pat Metheny for one uses triads a lot in composition and improvising , and often over a pedal tone
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It took you twenty years to fully grasp the power of triads and you're refusing to offer a hint of insight to a respected forum member who asks for a heads up on your post? Originally Posted by Groyniad
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I'm a triad freak.
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Originally Posted by whiskey02
i thought i'd said enough in the initial post to make it tolerably clear why i thought them particularly significant - even the title alone
so i read cg's response as dismissive rather than a genuine request for help - perhaps i was wrong.
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For myself triads are a way to stay away from playing off of scales and a simple way of greatly expanding the musical currency you have at your disposal. I find I can create more interesting melodies playing around with multiple (up to 12!) starting points for each chord. You can make so many 1/2 step resolutions and connections in and out of chords; I think it leads to more original sounding music. I'm really just scratching the surface here, and it's all possible by simply (and elaborately) linking little 3 note collections together. Using triads will in a way force you to create melodies and play more thoughtfully rather than running scales like so many players fall back on. Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
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If I were far more articulate than I am, I would have written this myself. Originally Posted by NSJ
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as soon as you play a triad you present a 'sound' - its very hard to do that with 3 or 4 scale tones
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I would disagree...triads are not the basic harmonic organization of jazz.... they may work for organization of your guitar and for performing jazz... but they are not the basic reference for jazz harmony.
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Yeah ok, but triads are the basic fundamental building blocks of western harmony. For me they are crucial for getting the fundamental sound. And also triads stacked get those extensions in a great way. Because they are smaller melodic/harmonic cells they can be heard with more clarity, even when applied as altered extensions.
Also the harmony used by mid period Jarrett, early Metheny and Ornette is very triadic, Even if polychordal.
So I would not dismiss triad studies.
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I've been studying with Tim Miller's website and he is a master of using triads and has lots of lessons on triads, highly recommended.
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I still say using triads well in jazz is an advanced topic, and that beginners should get a handle on the nuts and bolts of good ol "jazz chords," and those are 4 note maj7, m7, 7 and half diminished chords.
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i agree with this ... Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Triads a in a way a more for later more advanced study
than the 4 note 7th chords ...
"Less is more" innit ?
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Ok, sure. I guess. But that's not the way I teach. I like to teach from the bottom up. Getting to four note chords comes after studying three note ones, at least in my book. I find that way a fuller understanding of the four note ones. Not that I steer away from those chords. But I definitely start with triads before 7ths. YMMV. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Huh? I don't understand your point. ISTM that triads are the basic reference for all Western harmony- few Western things are based on two voice harmony or drones. Harmony pretty much means chords and all chords are based on triads of some sort (diatonic, quartal, etc.). Jazz tends to ad a 4th note (although back when Bright Size Life came out, Metheny was somewhat revolutionary with his trad-based approach). If we want to be able to play lines that have movement and sound musical, we'd better know how to use triads. Originally Posted by Reg
Van Eps's "Harmonic Mechanisms" books are like the Big Giant Compendium of Triads. The "Johnny Smith Approach To Guitar" analyzes chords via triads to simplify complicated chord structures and thus make them easier to deal with.
That said, I have not done near enough study of triads because early on scales seemed hipper- they got more notes, man- and I got into bad conceptual habits.
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