In this lesson we're going to explore the topic of triads and how you can use them to better understand the guitar fretboard. This lesson builds on the CAGED system lesson, so please make sure to complete that section first.

Triads recap

All the CAGED shapes are combinations of roots, 3rd (major or minor), and perfect 5ths. When you play CAGED shapes on the guitar, you're repeating a lot of those core notes, so you're rarely playing a triad with just three notes. To be exact, you're playing five or six notes and repeating a few of these chord tones. When you play an E shape, you're actually playing 1 - 5 - 1 - 3 - 5 -1
So we've got three roots, two fifths, and one third.

Trimmed down triads

Once you start getting comfortable with it the CAGED system, it's you want to trim these larger triads down to three notes only. This has lots of advantages, and in this lesson we'll see how doing this makes it easier to understand what diminished, augmented and suspended chords are really doing.

Let's look at C major and C minor and remove the noise.

C Major notes

C major trimmed down

C Minor intervals

C Minor notes

Play C minor example

C Minor intervals

Trim to understand

This is why they are called trimmed down triads: they are much easier to understand. It's worth noting that this idea is something that only really applies to guitar; you'll never hear of a trim down triad on the piano, because pianists will learn these smaller triads before they start expanding them into bigger voicings.

However, on the guitar, everything's kind of upside down. We start with big chords, that sound great, but whose contents we barely understand.

We'll see that triads are absolutely essential for many reasons, both direct and indirect. So, we'll explore some of the main uses of trimmed down triads, and I will also give you exercises that will help you practice and internalise these triads.

Diminished triads

Two other triads that are really common are the diminished and the augmented triad. A diminished triad, similar to a minor triad, consists of a root, a minor third, and a diminished fifth. So it's just like a minor chord that has it's 5th flattened by one semitone

C diminished notes

C diminished trimmed down

C diminished intervals

This might be the first time you've understood a diminished chord and that's because you're not looking at it as an abstract shape. It's much easier to understand when you put it in context of the major and minor trimmed down triads.

Augmented triads

On the other hand, an augmented triad starts like a major triad with a root, a major third, but it has an augmented fifth instead of a perfect fifth.

C augmented notes

C augmented trimmed down

C augmented intervals

Sus2 triads

Suspended triads are also very common. You've probably seen them in charts marked as "sus," usually sus2 or sus4. A sus2 triad has a root, a major second, and a perfect fifth, so there's no third in a suspended triad.

C sus2 notes

C sus2 trimmed down

C sus2 intervals

Sus4 triads

The sus4 has a root, a perfect fourth, and a perfect fifth. Again, there is no third, which means suspended triads don't have a major or minor quality because it's the third that gives those qualities. That's why they're called suspended; you don't really know which quality they're leaning towards, and they also create this a kind of suspension in their sound.

C sus2 notes

C sus4 trimmed down

C sus2 intervals