Triads

If you're a beginning guitar or piano student, this post might be of some value in putting together what you've learned. Today we're going to investigate the chord triads. In simple terms, these are the three chords that go together when you're playing a simple, three chord song.

If you remember our 1-4-5 positions from the post regarding Major and Minor chords, this might sound a bit familiar. A similar principle applies in the triads. What follows is going to be a generalization, and will not hold true in all songs. But there are a ton of songs where this system will work for you.

So let's get started. When you're playing a song in the key of C (position 1), many songs will use the 1-4-5 positions for the changes. In this case, we're talking about full steps rather than half steps (no sharps or flats are counted). If C is the first position, the fourth position would be F and the fifth position would be G. Let's look at an example.

In the old Hank Williams song, Your Cheatin' Heart, let's say you're starting out in C. There are some 7th chords in here, but we're going to skip those for now for simplicity. We'll cover those in a different post at some point in the future. You don't need them for this lesson. So, starting in C, the first change will be to the F chord, the second change goes to G, and then back to C. (1-4-5). See below:

(C) Your cheatin' heart will make you (F) weep.

You'll cry and (G) cry and try to (C) sleep.

But sleep won't come the whole night (F) through

Your cheating (G) heart will tell on (C) you.

And there you have the 1-4-5 chord progression. Just as a reminder, when you're talking chord progression, you're going in whole steps, not half steps, like you are when you make the chords using the 1-4-5 note positions.

The whole purpose of this lesson is not to teach you how to play an old Hank Williams song (although there's nothing wrong with that if you want to learn it). The idea is to instill that 1-4-5 concept so that you'll automatically know the chord changes, regardless of what key the song starts in. For example. Let's say the singer wants to move that particular song up one step and you need to play it in D. And, drat the luck, you can't your capo. Using the 1-4-5 progression, you'll know that if D is the first position, the fourth position is going to be G and the fifth will be A. (D,E,F,G,A) Make sense? If that's unclear, leave a comment and I'll try to clarify it a bit more.

Next time we're going to continue with the second part of this song and talk about the "off chord."