Major & Minor Triads

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman. Today we are going to be learning a finger power exercise that will help us review all 12 major and minor triads. In case you forgot, a triad is just another name for a three-note chord. 'Tri-' as a prefix means three. Think triangle, or tricycle, or adenosine triphosphate, which your body would definitely be using to ride a tricycle. So remember, a triad is a group of three notes in a chord. Let's come to the piano and get ready to play some triads. How do you figure out a major triad? I basically want you to become a triad master, where any note that I name: A-flat major, E-flat major, D-major, you know how to play that triad. Let's talk about figuring it out. In C major it's easy, right? All white keys: C E G One way to figure out a triad is just by remembering the pentascale. If I say give me a C major triad, you can use the C major pentascale, and then just skip instead of stepping through the pentascale, and that builds the triad. For example, if you remember A-flat major, play the A-flat major pentascale, and then just take DO MI SO every other note skipping, and that builds the major triad. We often call the three notes, or pitches of a triad, the root because it's the lowest note of the triad like the roots of a tree. The third because it's the interval of a third above the root, and the fifth because it's a fifth above the root. When you combine the root, third, and fifth that builds a triad. So we could spell the A-flat major triad: A-flat, C, E-flat. Let's try spelling some other major triads. What if we wanted an E major triad? Well we could start simply by thinking about the E major pentascale. Now, what would the root of the E major triad be? Well the root is our lowest pitch, which in this case is E, and what's the third? Well a third above the root is one, two, three, G-sharp. And now can you tell me what the fifth of the E major triad is? How do we find a fifth? Well we just count to five, it's that easy one, two, three, four, five, the fifth of our triad is B. So we spell the E major triad E, G-sharp, B. Now, another fun way that I have found to keep track of all the different triads, because there are a lot. How many are there in fact? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 keys on the piano before it starts over again. So you basically have twelve major and twelve minor triads to essentially memorize. Now to help organize them, I like to think of them in families, and the first family I call the marshmallow sandwich chords. Why a marshmallow sandwich? Well, I'm going to put a piece of white bread on the bottom, a piece of white bread on the top, and I'll put a white marshmallow in the middle. The white, or sorry, the marshmallow sandwich chords are all white keys, and what are those? We have C major all white keys. We have F major, all white keys, and G major, all white keys. So these kind of form a family, that I call the marshmallow sandwiches. Okay so that's one way to kind of think of them grouped together in your mind. Now there's another family of three chords that I call the blackberry sandwich chords. We've got white bread on the bottom, white bread on top, and the blackberry jam in the middle. Okay, so white on the outside, blacks in the middle. We have D-major, E-major, and A-major all in that group. Try playing those chords with me. Play D major, play E major, and play A major. Those are blackberry sandwich chords, okay? Let's talk about how composers can show you which triads they want you to play using chord symbols. Major triads are simple. The chord symbol for a D major triad is simply a capital letter D. The chord symbol for an E major triad is a capital E. A major is a capital A. Basically any major triad symbol is simply the capital letter itself. If you see capital C by itself, play C major. If you see a capital F-sharp by itself, play F-sharp major. Now there's another kind of family that I call the chocolate cookie with white cream filling, you know like an Oreo. And those chocolate cookies with the white cream filling in the middle, it's like you've got the chocolate cookie, the white cream filling, and the chocolate cookie on top. Okay, like an Oreo cookie chord. That would be like D-flat major, which we could also call C-sharp major, right? We have E-flat major and A-flat major, and those are all of our Oreo cookie chords. Try playing them with me. D-flat major, E-flat major and A-flat major, and see how those kind of make their own family of three chords. Now our last family I call the Odd-balls, because they're the ones that don't really fit into any kind of pattern. We've got F-sharp major, which we could also call G-flat major, which is all black keys. Try playing that one with me. You can use left hand or right hand. So we have this one with all black keys, we have B major, which is white, black, black, which I don't know what that is. That's like a blackberry jam sandwich where you burnt a piece of toast for the top piece of bread. And then you have B-flat major, which is black, white, white. I guess maybe that's like a marshmallow sandwich where you burnt the bottom piece of bread. Okay, so those I call the Odd-balls. We've got B-flat major, B major, and F-sharp major t ...