Guitar chords are made up of three separate notes combined together and can sound quite differently depending on their intervals, which makes understanding basic guitar chord theory essential.
An example would be comparing two major triads from different scales; their sounds will differ greatly due to different intervals.
Major Triad
Major triad chords consist of three notes; many guitarists learn them early on in their repertoire as a starting point for expanding their chord vocabulary.
Major chords are created by stacking thirds from a root note, creating an inimitable sound and making this type of chord one of the cornerstones for other types.
A major triad is easy to construct: just take the root note of a scale (the root note) and count up four 1/2 steps, giving you your second note (major 3rd). From there you add another half step left and get your third note (major 7th).
Most basic triad shapes are in “closed position.” This means they can be moved up and down the neck while still retaining their basic major or minor qualities, providing an effective way to develop your ear while making sure that these chords don’t become overly thick when played in real songs.
Minor Triad
Triad chords are widely employed in songs to add harmonic tension and produce more dramatic or melancholic sounds, often through arpeggios – playing notes one at a time instead of all at once.
By studying minor triads, you will establish an excellent base from which to expand into other triad shapes and chord qualities. Practice these triads across all 12 keys by transposing as needed until you develop an intuitive grasp on their tonality and can perform them accurately and with confidence in any key.
To create a minor triad, take the root notes of any major scale (here C) and lower its third fret by one fret, giving it its characteristic flat or minor note tone. This method of creating emotional sounding music makes learning chords from favorite songs much simpler – all your white note triads may sound slightly different due to intervals such as half tones and half steps; yet they will all share similar structures.
Suspended Triad
Suspended chords, also known as non-triadic chords, do not contain a third and cannot be major or minor chords; however, their fourth can still be altered based on what chords exist within. Suspended chords are common in contemporary music genres like rock and jazz and are especially often utilized during solo performances.
Tom Petty’s song Free Fallin’ features guitar players using an Fsus4/Fsus2 progression that creates forward motion within the song, while jazz musicians add seventh or ninth notes to further embellish these chords for even more complex sounds.
As you explore suspended chords, they create tension that needs to be released. Therefore, it is wise not to use suspended chords as the final chord in a progression since this will sound incomplete until resolved with another triad or non-suspended chord.
Seventh Triad
As their name implies, seventh chords add a seventh note to the top of a triad. Because of its dissonant qualities, seventh chords can feel discordant and unstable, often necessitating downward resolution by adding fifths (or fourths in some instances).
There are more seventh chord qualities than triads that can be created when altering scale degrees, though most are rarely heard in Western music.
The dominant seventh chord is one of the most frequently used types of seventh chords, constructed on top of a major triad and featuring an added seventh to create more dramatic sounds. Practice playing and identifying seventh chords to gain proficiency quickly identifying their root, quality and inversion – this will enable you to improvise and write chords with confidence as well as develop speed and accuracy when switching from and between chords.