Triads and Chord Scales: In all inversions on all sets of strings.

By Rob Silver
What you have here are scans of my own hand written notes, complete with the odd coffee
stain from when I was starting out and figuring all this stuff out for myself.
Very Basic Chord Theory...
A triad is a chord with three notes. There are four basic triads, Major, Minor,
Augmented and Diminished. Each is created by combining different intervals and playing
them at the same time.

The Major triad is created by taking a root note and simultaneously playing another note a
Major 3rd (4 frets) higher than that and another note A 5th (7 Frets) above the root
note/minor 3rd above the second note For example if your root note was A then A Major
would contain the notes A, C#, E

The Minor triad is created by taking a root note and simultaneously playing another note a
Minor 3rd (3 frets) higher than that and another note A 5th (7 Frets) above the root
note/minor 3rd above the second note. (For a brief explanation of intervals see appendix1)
For example if your root note was A then A Minor would contain the notes A, C, E

The augmented triad is created by taking a root note and simultaneously playing another
note a Major 3rd (4 frets) higher than that and another note an augmented 5th (8Frets)
above the root note/major 3rd above the second note
For example if your root note was A then A Major would contain the notes A, C#, E#

The diminished triad is created by taking a root note and simultaneously playing another
note a Minor 3rd (3 frets) higher than that and another note a flat 5th (7 Frets) above
the root note/minor 3rd above the second note For example if your root note was A then
A Major would contain the notes A, C, Eb.

So what are inversions of a chord?

If you invert a chord you place a note other than the root as the lowest note,
so for triads which have 3 notes, you would have the root position, spelt 1, 3, 5
then the first inversion spelt 3, 5, 1 and the second inversion spelt 5, 1, 3.
Next...
Chord scales.
On the next few pages I’ve mapped out the chord scales for the Major Scale on

all sets of strings with all in inversions of the chords.

So how do you know what chords are in a particular chord scale?
You just take alternate degrees of the scale and create triads from them.
Huh?
Well we know that the first triad in a major key is a Major chord. (spelt 1, 3, 5)
So if we continue up the scale taking alternate note:
Major Scale (1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

In the diagrams that follow you can see how the chord scale is played in
various inversions and sets of strings
APPENDIX.
Appendix 1.
Intervals:
The difference in pitch between any two notes is called an interval. If they are played one
after each other the interval is “Melodic” if they are played at teh same time the
interval is “Harmonic.” There are different names for the various intervals depending on
how big the gap between them (ie. the number of frets) is. The names of the interval
for two notes 1 -12 frets apart are listed in the table below:

When you talk about the intervals that “Spell” a particular scale or chord, they are always
named in relation to the “Root note” ie. the first note in the scale. The Minor Pentatonic
scale is spelt 1, b3, 4, 5, b7, which means the distance from the root note (1) to the
different scale degrees are 3 frets, 5 frets 7 frets and 10 frets. Similarly for the
Major Pentatonic scale spelt 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, the distances are 2 frets, 4 frets, 7 frets,
and 9 frets.