Ears still reeling from the latest Godsmack, Black Eyed Peas, or Lady Gaga concert? Jam out to your fave artists Disturbed, Audioslave, Rihanna, and Kanye West 24/7 on your iPod? Do you love your music LOUD? Keep it up and you might end up as deaf as your Granny by age 30! If you want to keep listening to your favorite music, you have to protect your ears.

It’s not rocket science. Save your ears from total hearing annihilation by following a few simple steps like using the iPhone app “NoiseLevel” between songs next time you’re at a concert and stand a bit further back if the needle’s off the chart! Keep reading to find out more easy ways to reduce hearing loss… like special earplugs just for drummers!

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As players, guitarists are expected to have a wide range of skills including incredible ears. We are asked to play by ear, accompany singers in any key, and improvise. In developing these skills we need to be able to recognize different chord types and their inversions, as well as to be able to translate what we hear to the instrument.

When we are learning different chord forms we seem to be inundated with their seemingly endless variations and notations. But at their essence are four different basic sound qualities: major, minor, diminished and augmented. Within these four basic triad qualities are really just two modes: major and minor. The diminished triad is related to the minor triad, as the augmented is to the major one.

In this article we will review close position major and minor triads as they are found on the guitar. Close position triads on the guitar are perhaps not the most practical chords to use from a playing perspective, but they will help you understand the construction of larger four and even six note chords that you may be more familiar with, and provide a means for learning their sound quality in their most basic forms.

Triads

Triads are three note chords built by stacking thirds, from a root note. If you consider the common C major chord below, it actually only consists of three pitches: C, E and G. The other two notes are just repetitions: another C on the second string and another E on the first string.

A standard C Major guitar chord

Standard C Major guitar chord

Chords sound the strongest when we put their root as the lowest note. Nevertheless, any of a chord’s members can be the lowest, note giving a triad three possible positions: Click to read the rest…

Learning to hear different triad types and their inversions is not really that difficult, it just takes a little time and understanding. There are no shortage of different approaches to developing this important skill, including various solfege systems and other mnemonic devices. When we learn these different methodologies, we should keep in mind that the end goal is to be able to recognize a chord’s quality and inversion not unlike you would any other musical sound like a major or minor scale. This skill is analogous to the way we recognize colors or words.

Consider the word dog. We do not have to necessarily read every letter, and think about its phonetic make-up to understand this word in the context of a sentence. But what about a word like: perspicuous? We may have to take a second to sound out the word, and maybe even consult a dictionary before its meaning and context becomes clear – at least I did!

Learning to recognize musical sounds like chords is similar. We may hear a piece of music and simply recognize, for example, that it is in a major key not a minor one. But perhaps a particular chord in the music takes a few moments to work out its quality and inversion.

We can figure out a chord quality and its inversion using our understanding of basic chord types and intervals.

This article focuses on using our knowledge of the sound of major and minor triads in root position and its interval make-up to tease out the sound of different inversions of these basic chords. As with any approach, consider this one as a tool to use while you learn the different sound qualities of these sonorities.

Root Position Major and Minor Triads

You may recall that basic triads are made up of three pitches stacked in thirds from a root note. For example, a C chord is made up of the pitches C-E-G.

A C major triad

A C Major Triad Example

The above root position triad has a quality to it. We call it a “major” triad by definition: the interval from the root note to its third is a major third, and from the root note to the fifth is a perfect fifth. Musicians sometimes describe the sound of a major triad as being clear and bright, owing to the quality of its third.

The sound of a major triad also has a sense of stability to it. Click to read the rest…