need help

[dchladmar]

in my quest to understand the guitar i am trying to understand what a "traid" is.


can anyone explain? thank you

[sunglassesatnight]

First of all, welcome! It's a good site and community here.

Now, about the triad. A triad is a grouping of three notes played together (harmonically). There are many different kinds of triads, but the most common are major and minor.

A major triad contains the first, third and fifth notes of the major scale that corresponds to its root note.

For example: a C major chord (triad) contains the notes C, E, G. A C major scale is CDEFGABC. Notice the notes in the chord are indeed the first, third and fifth.

Taking that C major scale again, we can construct a minor chord (triad). We do the same thing, except we flat the third by one half-step, resulting in a chord of C, Eb, G.

Most all of your basic guitar chords are going to be triads. Though you may play six notes, it is still a triad. Check this out.

When you play a C chord like this:

Code: Select all

--0
--1
--0
--2
--3
--

You have your triad in the lowest notes of CEG, but then you have another E. Though there are four notes played in this chord, since only three of the notes have different names, it is still a triad.

I hope this helped, keep asking questions. There are a lot of knowledgable folks around here on almost any musical matter.

[wayward_blue]

couldn't have said it any better!