Triad mayhem!!!!!

Hello dearest school of rock people, Alfredo here.  As an experiment I have been asking all of my private students and the occassional random student walking by in a musical haze to name me some chords/triads/arpeggios/chord tones/whatever you want to call it.  For example, name me the notes in a F# major chord?  Now, I would ask them these questions without their particular instrument in front of them.  This changes the game a little bit.  Now, I got some quick and correct answers, some slow and drawn out answers, or the complete blank stare followed by an uneducated guess (the answer is F# A# C# if you didn't know).  Unacceptable fredo says!!!

This type of musical information is extremely important for any musician playing any style of music.  Being able to verbally name those notes is just as important as being able to play/sing them on your instrument as well as being able to hear them.  For example, if I have my guitar/piano/bass students learn a song by ear I expect them to be able to hear if there is a major or minor chord being played.  As a guitarist/pianist it is important because obviously you play the chords, but it also gives you an idea of what notes to play during a solo or a melody.  Not every song uses a single minor pentatonic scale to solo over.  As a bassist, playing roots is pretty boring and pretty easy to be honest.  To add some flavor to the pot of bass stew, adding those 'chord tones' is important.  Listen to anything by The Beatles, The Police or Led Zeppelin and you will know what I'm talking about.  Paul McCartney is a master of this.  For vocalists it's obviously important since most of the harmonies you sing are these exact notes that I mention, 3rds and 5ths!! Drummers?  They just hit things.  I kid.

I'll give you a taste as to how I remember these chords.  There are many ways to learn these.  The first is by just going down the musical alphabet and skipping every other note.  For example, if you are trying to figure out a 'C' major chord, C is your first note, skip D, E is your 2nd note or the '3rd' of the chord, skip F, and G is the 3rd note or '5th' of the chord.  Using this process narrows down your choices dramatically.  Now how do we know if 'E' or 'G' are correct or if they should be sharped or flattened??  That's for next time.

Bassists: this song is definitely a perfect example of this.  Imagine if Paul just played roots the whole time?  Boring!

Fredo