Spawned from concepts learned while going through The Advancing Guitarist by Mick Goodrick, and a technique I've been using to navigate the fretboard in both chord- and solo-context.
This is the development repository - codewise, I use Less and
CoffeeScript. I have CodeKit doing the compiles and build into a
build/ directory which is then published to the gh-pages branch - that branch is
served with GitHub Pages at https://triad-puzzle.com
Currently, you get a sheet with 8 random triads and when you've played through them, hit the SPACE key (or tap any of the pieces if you're on a touch-enabled device) to get a new sheet.
Most musicians know this (either because they know theory or because they've played a lot and gradually arrived at the same conclusions :-) - but here's a basic rundown of what I'm doing with this:
A triad is a chord that consist of three notes: Root, third and fifth.
Depending on the intervals between those, the triad has a different symbol/name,
e.g., if you stack the notes C, E and G, you have what's called a C major
triad and its symbol is just a C. If you lower the third (E) a half step to Eb
(which is pronounced "E-flat"), the chord becomes a C minor triad, which has the
symbol Cm.
Similarly, there is a C diminished triad and a C augmented triad with the
symbols Cdim and C+.
That's all well and good for learning them in the key of C, but there are 11 other
notes we could start on. For instance, starting just a half-step higher, these four
triads would be named after their new root, C# (pronounced "C sharp" - yep 😁) -
so: C#, C#m, C#dim & C#+.
In order to learn the triads in any key, it's great to learn the formula (or recipe) for any given one, expressed in the steps within the octave, so here's how I see them:
| Triad | Symbol | Formula |
|---|---|---|
| major | 1 3 5 | |
| minor | m | 1 b3 5 |
| diminished | dim | 1 b3 b5 |
| augmented | + | 1 3 #5 |
After doing this for quite some time, I started seeing other combinations that wasn't real triads per se, but nevertheless great-sounding alternatives for the standard ones. Their recipes are:
| Symbol | Formula |
|---|---|
| sus2 | 1 2 5 |
| sus4 | 1 4 5 |
| add9 | 2 3 5 |
| m(add9) | 2 b3 5 |
The app will pick 8 random triads and shows their symbols on a sheet, so you can practice playing them and most importantly, learn to move between any two in the smoothest possible way.