Vintage Club #6 with Richard | Triads 1

Great lesson Richard, and an “aha” moment when during the lesson I spontaneously started playing triad chords off the pentatonic scale. So much work to do, and learning triads basically forces one gradually to memorize all the note positions on the fret board.

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No harm in wrapping your head around both at the same time. I think power chords, mini-bar chords and scales start to come into view as well.
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Good session Richard, i don’t practice these enough or incorporate them into songs often. But today’s exercises opened up an idea for a bridge section I’ve been struggling with. Using triads will likely compliment the lyrics more but may prove easier to play, than the current progression of the section. An added bonus I was not expecting.

On the subject of pre club material, I don’t recall receiving the diagrams you posted here via email but will check in the morning, as its now stupid o’clock.

:sunglasses:

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Just FYI I didn’t receive them either but was happy with what was posted at the beginning of this thread :+1: it gave me what I needed to practice prior to the session.

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This has given me a whole new use for the loop pedal :+1:

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Just a follow up from my nocturnal posting.

Checked the mail this morning which does include “Recommended Prep Before Class” with a link to the Clubs Archive. The latest completed Clubs were at the top of the page, so I did not think to scroll down. This morning I noticed both Lieven and Richard’s latest clubs were at the foot of the page and the VC6 “Preview” although containing no text, did have all the relevant prep documents under the resources tab (as stated in the email).

Guess I should follow my advice of old and read all the text/content on the website pages but would it not makes sense for the up and coming club links to be at the top of the page and not the bottom ? Appreciate it is still early days so no doubt some fine tuning the more that are done.

:sunglasses:

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I got the information for the prep material on the community plattform, when it was posted by Richard, think it was Friday (?), so early enough
I received the email too, but only at 18:15 (UTC+1) yesterday, so “barely” before the session, maybe the mails could be sent out a little earlier? Might help those who are no community members?

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I took a lot out of yesterday’s session! Preparing the session let me take a deeper look in advance into triad theory, I had to jump a bit ahead, as I only had covered the Easy Triads lesson of Module 17 so far. Had a few "click " moments since then, what a great option to get better knowledge of the fretboard. Definitly a subject to dive in deeper and practice from now on.
The mini barré of the b and e string with index and using 2nd finger for the g string was hard at the beginning a few weeks ago (I had my fights with the Mini F back then too). I did a lot of practice moving the shape up and down the neck, which helped, and then started to play triads along to easy songs, just with moving shape up and down to force myself finding the right positions at various frets. Still not there to get them all clean, but progressing.
As everytime, thanks to Richard and the whole team for offering those great sessions!

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That’s great to know … lots of aha moments ahead I hope. Triads are the work of years of unhurried and enjoyable development.

I’m with you on that Clint … although my post may have seemed otherwise. :slight_smile:

Glad to hear that you had your own aha moment Toby.

I may have been wrong in thinking they were emailed out early and some time before the session. In fact, judging by Toby’s deep dive and analysis, plus Andrea’s comment, it seems they were shared early on the Clubs page itself, via a link to the Archive page & Resources, but emailed later.

There is a meeting to discuss all aspects of the Clubs this week and I am sure that all comments and feedback will feed into the discussion.

Tagging @FannyJustinGuitar to catch these extra comments. :slight_smile:

Chord looping & Triads = many hours of fun! :slight_smile:

Thanks Andrea and kudos for working that shape. You will get there and it will be worthwhile when you do. :slight_smile:

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Excellent lesson Richard. I’m working on finding the ‘right’ version of triad to play along to songs. Although for example a C is a C, if it’s too high or too low it doesn’t sound right.

Terrific example of triad use here in the intro.

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I am finding @Richard_close2u that this class will surely help me to get a way better feel for triads and where to play them without even really having to know the theory in behind it! I left myself go to a"I know nothing scenario, don’t question it, just go with the flow kinda mindset", worked for me! :grinning: Koodos there brother!

Now, I am at that stage in theory and on the guitar to learn triads and am learning and understand the basics of the roots(1’st) 3rd’s and 5th’s…not only that, flat 3’rds and 5’ths now make sense! An eye opener!!

Thank you, what a great way to learn triads.

Rock on!
Darren

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Resources and notes and backing tracks all now completed … watch for an announcement when they are shared on the archive page.

@sairfingers One of my recommendations for triads in real life is that exact song ! :slight_smile:

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Hi Richard,

I also found a few of these in this class. I didn’t receive the usual “how was the class” mail, so I’ll post my thought here.

I watched the Justin class on triads a while ago. It did not make it clear the use of triads and tricks to playing them. Your use of three chord triads, in the three shapes, with the fretboard location all next to each other hit home how useful these can be as well as variation on how to play them. Progressively having us try triads on the backing tracks really helped as well. These were very effective tools and removed the “why do I need to use these” feeling I got from the Justin lesson. I now have some excitement about using these. It would have taken some dedication to learning these before I figured out what your diagram did in moments. I may have never really looked into it for lack of understanding why. Thank you!

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And of course Justin has a lesson with a very detailed explanation of the triad intro.

When are triads used in comparison to open chords?

There is no answer here other than it depends on the player and the context they are playing in. A solo performance by a single guitarist, with or without singing, probably requires something more than triads to carry a song through from start to finish. A second guitar part can focus on triads only, perhaps not playing all the time for the duration of a song but adding flavour and spice at choice moments with short stabbed triads, arpeggiated triads, melodic lines that weave triads and scale notes together etc. There is a good discussion underway on barre chords vs open chords and triads get a lot of attention in there so check it out here: Barre vs Open chords which do you use most often?

Can you close up on the recommended finger shapes at the end?

Sorry, this doesn’t carry over to a written response and it was missed in the live session. Hopefully these diagrams will help.

Root position

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3rd (first inversion)

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5th (2nd inversion)

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Is using a G triad at fret 3 an alternative to using the G barre chord?

In some circumstances yes, it can be. This is another response following the line that states, it depends on context. If you’re looking to avoid playing barre chords because they are challenging then, a small triad might work as a short term fix. If you’re playing a fingerstyle piece that only needs a few notes from a chord (triad) and has melody notes around it, then a triad could give you that and some fingers are available to add in those extra notes. If you’re playing a second guitar with someone else strumming chords then it will work too - and in that circumstance consider a G triad further along the neck to provide tonal separation.

Do we always play only the 3 strings we are making the triad with or add lower strings for effect

In the resources (available now from the archive page https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/vintage-club-6-cla-014#resources) about several songs using triads.

One of the songs I name check is Substitute by The Who. The main intro / chorus riff uses D, G and A triads. And they are played over a drone open D string. If described using chord format you would call them D, G/D and A/D. There is a song that adds a lower string to great effect. If you think what your open strings are (E, A, D) you can use them judiciously in many ways by adding them in as lower root notes or simply lower notes below a triad. This does not have to be done using them as drone notes. They can be incorporated into picked arpeggio patterns etc.

ANNOUNCEMENT:

The follow up resources are available now from the archive page

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Are triads only ever played on these 3 strings

In the introduction, I explained that, strictly speaking, the open chords on 4 or 5 or 6 strings can be correctly called triad chords. This is due to them containing only the triad notes and no extra notes.

E is a 6-string chord but it only contains 3 notes, the triad notes which constitute E major. The fact that some of those notes are duplicated (at octave intervals) does not negate the fact it has only 3 notes.
E = E, G#, B = Root, 3, 5

That said, in common usage, when people refer to triads, they generally mean the 3-string shapes.

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