What are the Triads or Chords?

Most Basic chords consists of the specific arrangements of the three notes, called Triads. A triad is a simultaneous combination of three notes. Triads consists of Root note which gives the chord its letter name and 3 interval above the root note & the 5th interval above the root note. All triads are three note chords, but not all three note chords are triads.

There are fourth different kind of triads-major, minor & diminished & augmented. Although the intervals that make up the triads are always thirds, they differ in that they may be either major or minor thirds. Every interval has an effect on the sound of the chord, but it is the root that determines the chords identity. It is the interval from the root to the 3rd note of the group that determines whether they are major or minor. A major triad with the sharpened 5th is called augmented and a minor triad with a flattened 5th is called diminished.

Build Chords/Triads from the Scale notes

Most of the guitarists want to play chords as soon as possible & to play it they follow the chord charts or their teacher tells them how to form chords. It is ok to know just the chord notes & how to hold them but as they get experience, the search of so many questions begin to arise like how to build the chords. So in this lesson we will learn to build the chords or triads from the scale itself. Chords are basiclly built from their related scales and they consists of the notes from the related scales.

In any key there are seven diatonic triads. They can be formed by building two intervals of a third on each note in the diatonic scale. Only notes including in the diatonic scale are used to build the thirds. The whereabouts of the semi tone steps will determine whether the intervals are major or minor thirds, and will dictate the type of  triad.