You can use triads to play jazz chords, and it is a very powerful tool for this. Triads are very flexible and easy to play while also sounding great as chords. In this playlist, I will go over how you can use the triads you already know to play great sounding jazz progressions using only easy 3-note jazz chords.
We can play a wide range of chords with these 3-note easy jazz chords and they are very easy to add notes to or change notes to give us the extensions or alterations we want.
You can check out the videos here or go through the playlist on YouTube through this link:
Working with Triads as Jazz Chords and making it a flexible tool
This video discusses how you can work with triads and inversions when comping, showing you how to voice-lead them, use inversions, and add extensions and alterations.
Finding Triads for 7th chords
This video is actually about soloing, but the first few minutes provide a very thorough method for relating triads to a 7th chord.
Playing a Jazz Standard using Triad voicings
In this lesson, I am going to show you how you can get started with some triad voicings. Starting with what you already know and then go over 5 levels, step-by-step, of how you can play some great sounding comping ideas using these amazing voicings.
Applying Triad voicings to a Jazz Blues
This lesson is going over how you find triad voicings for a C jazz blues. You will also learn what you can do with the voicings you find using melodies and inversions.
Other great 3-note Jazz Voicings to Add To Your Vocabulary
When you think about Jazz Chords then you are probably thinking about rich chords with a lot of beautiful extensions. Of course, the rich colors of Jazz are about having chords that are embellished like this. At the same time when you are playing Jazz and when you are comping then you also want to have flexible chords so that you can move from one to the next, create small melodies and 3-note chords are fantastic for this.
Using less common Triad choices on a Maj7 chord
This video is going over 6 triads that I use for my Cmaj7 voicings and will also demonstrate how you can use them in a II V I cadence in C major. At the end of the video, I go over 4 more triads that are a bit tricky to use but also yield more interesting sounds!
Let me know what you think!
These videos give you a path to work on using triads and becoming very flexible with them, is there something you are missing or maybe something else you would like to see?
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In this video, I am going to show you how you can use the triads that you already know as a great way to create some beautiful jazz chords. Starting with material that you already know to open up a vast amount of jazz voicings is a really efficient approach to becoming much freer and begin to create a jazz chord vocabulary, and it is also really great for fretboard knowledge.
It is really interesting to explore how great a tool the triads are as jazz voicings.
I am going to do this in three steps:
How To Find Triads You Can Use, in a Practical Way
Easily Turn This Into a lot of chords and ideas to play
Find Triads for more Complicated Chords with Extensions
Step 1 – Rootless Jazz Voicings for a II V I
If we take a II V I in C major with some very basic jazz chords then we have this:
If I remove the Bass note then I have
Turning Diatonic 7th chords into triad voicings
The same principle use on all the diatonic chords in C major would yield:
And without the root we have these triads that could work as the above chords:
Step 2 – More Triad voicings with inversions
Before looking at adding extensions and alterations to the chords, let’s have a look at how much we can already do with these simple triads.
We now can play a II V I with these rootless, triad-based, but if this F major triad is a good voicing for Dm7 (Example 3) then the inversions of it are as well.
If I do this for the II V I progression I have these 3 ways to play that:
And of course this is just on the middle string set. This works on other string sets as well
Step 3 – Adding Extensions and using other triad types
If you look at a G7b9 voicing spelled out x 10 9 10 9 x or G B F Ab then the top notes of this chord are B F Ab which is, in fact, an F dim triad.
If I inser these into the II V I’s from example 4 then I have:
In the same way a Dm11: 10 x 10 10 8 x or D C F G has the three notes C F G on top. That is a Csus4 triad.
This gives us these II V I examples
And finally we can add a 13th to the Cmaj7: which is the same as playing an Asus4/C which gives us:
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.
You want to include Triads in your Jazz Guitar vocabulary. Triads are some of the stronges melodies we have available and in the video I am going to go over 5 easy exercises to build your triad vocabulary on jazz. For each of the exercises I also have a jazz lick using the pattern so you can hear how it sounds in context.
Of course you are practicing scales and arpeggios but it is difficult to put that into real music. But there are also ways to practice that are a lot easier to put into a solo. I am also going to talk about how ways practice them and of course give you some examples on how to use them in a solo.
I find that working a bit at these patterns really helps:
Making more interesting solo lines
Use the things you Practice for technique
Have a better overview of arpeggios on the neck
Knowing the Scales and music theory
As a small extra feature this also demonstrates some of the places where I use sweeping or economy picking!
Lick #1 – Top Note Targets
As you will see I tend to work mostly on triads in scales, so what is often called diatonic triads. This is because if you check them out there then you have them together with all the other notes you use when you are soloing so it is about understanding the triad, the chord and the scale.
This first example is a pattern that really emphasizes the top note of the triad arpeggio. Since the top note also almost can work as an independent melody this is an easy way to build a strong line just having a simple melody that is harmonized with arepggios.
On a side note you can hear Lage Lund use this pattern quite a lot.
Exercise 1 – Diatonic Arpeggios
Probably the great thing about this pattern is that it really emphasizes the top note, so the rest of the notes almost sound like they are accompanying that note. This means that the melody you hear is mostly the top-notes moving. The large interval skip from the 5 to 1 followed by the ascending arpeggio also gives the line a lot of forward motion.
Altered Scale Triad Pair
Here you have an example of how I might use the top-note pattern. In this II V I lick I am using it starting on the Dm7 and then going on to the G7alt with Bbm and Abm triads.
Bbm and Abm form a triad pair on a G7alt since they are triads with out common notes:
Abm: Ab B Eb and Bb: Bb Db F
Finding triads for a chord
The way I find the triads that I can use over a chord is by looking at a chord with extensions. As an example you can look at the Dm7 chord, with the stable extensions in C major that would be a Dm(11):
D F A C E G
And the process is really just to pick out the triads contained:
Dm: D F A
F: F A C
Am: A C E
C: C E G
Lick #2 – 3rds Distance Cascade3rds distance
This way of playing the triads is useful because you are playing them together so that they fit a chord. If you are improvising over a Dm7 then Dm, F and Am triads all work over that chord.
Having the triads together like this works well for cascading arpeggio ideas combining several triads over one chord.
A useful or practical way to practice this is across the string sets in two different ways
The first approach relies on Economy picking where the second is using legato for the same note set. As you may have noticed in other lessons I use this economy patter quite a lot.
3rds Distance – Legato idea
In this lick the cascading triads are on the Dm7 and then stretching into the G7alt with the Db triad. This way of using the triads also creates a great 3 note grouping.
Lick #3 – Leading Notes
Adding chromatic passing notes to triads is a great way to use them and add some bebop or jazz flavour to the triads.
The exercise here below is taking the diatonic triads in a common 8th fret scale position and add a chromatic leading note before the root.
Chromatic leading notes
The example here below adds a leading note first to the F major triad and then the A minor triad. The G7alt also adds a descending version of the leading note to an Abm triad.
Lick #4 – The Wrong way around
Another variaton that is easy to use is to play the triads ascending through the scale, so Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bø, C but then play each triad descending.
This exercise is showed on the top string set and notice how I am using economy picking to play the triads.
New Directions for Triads
The lick is using the first three triads from the exercise: Dm, Em and F major and from there going into an altered lick based on an AbmMaj7 arpeggio.
Lick #5 – Arpeggios are melodies
You don’t have to play the notes of the triad in the same order all the time. In this exercise I am changing the order from 1 3 5 to 3 5 1.
This has two advantages: I t really brings out the 3rd in the triad and of course creates a strong melody.
Creating new triad sounds
This lick is demonstrating how you might use the triads. On the Dm7 I used an F major and an A minor triad.
Notice how the lick has a lot of large intervals and the triads still pull everything together.
Arpeggios and Target notes
A huge part of playing over chord changes is using arpeggios like triads and then thinking ahead so you hit the right target notes in the next chord.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.
