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The Triad Puzzle

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.

Concepts

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#+.

Formulae

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

Non-triads

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.