Guy playing chord on guitar

Spread Triads on Guitar

Spread triads, or open voice triads, are a variation of the more commonly used standard triads, or closed voice triads. The intervalic relationship between the notes of open voiced triads creates a more melodic structure that’s a bit less linear.

Guy playing arpeggios on guitar

Arpeggio Exercises for Guitar

Arpeggios are great tools to be used in music, but they can take a little time to get under your fingers. In this lesson, we’ll take a look at a few approaches to practicing arpeggios that not only build technique, but also improve musicality and overall knowledge of the fretboard.

Positional playing on guitar

Positional Playing on Guitar

As guitarists, once we learn the pentatonic boxes we seem to immediately strive to get “out of the box” and extend our playing up and down the fretboard. However, what if instead of trying to get out of the box, we seek to maximize what each box position has to offer?

Jazz guitar hanging on wall

Augmented Triads on Guitar

In previous lessons we’ve learned about major, minor and diminished triads. In this lesson we’ll round out the triads with augmented triads. We’ll take a look at the interval structure that creates the augmented triad and map them to the guitar fretboard.

Guitar player playing chords on a Fender guitar

How to Build Minor Scale Chords

In a previous lesson, we looked at how to build chords from the major scale, which is an important concept when it comes to understanding diatonic harmony. In this lesson we’re going to go through the process of building minor scale chords, which follows the same process as the major scale.

Diminished triads guitar player

Diminished Triads on Guitar

In previous lessons we’ve explored both major triads and minor triads, which are two of the most commonly used triads. In this lesson we round out the triads of the major scale with a look at diminished triads.

Seventh chords jazz guitar hero

Seventh Chords

Seventh chords are chords that include the root plus the 3rd, 5th, and 7th intervals above the root. Another way to think about it is a seventh chord is a triad plus a 7th interval.

Les Paul guitar fretboard
John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers playing guitar Flickr photographer Chad Carson [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons