How to ACTUALLY practice triads. And, I’m giving lessons!

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hey, so I wanted to make a quick quick video lesson and just kind of announce that uh I'm going to be taking on students. I think about 10 to 20 would be good. I'd like to teach you on Tuesdays, Wednesday, Thursdays, and Sundays if possible.

[00:00:14]And uh yeah, I think it'd be cool. If you're interested, drop a comment. Message me on Instagram. We can talk.

[00:00:20]Um alongside that, I want to talk about something that people don't really tend to do, I found, on the guitar. And this includes myself cuz I went back to practice it today and was like, "Wow, I suck at this." Now, I'm going to play diatonically uh the three different shapes, all major triads through a G major scale, right?

[00:00:37]>> [music] [music] >> It's fine. It's messy, sloppy, I messed up. But, the whole point is I know it, right? A lot of people know that cuz you've just got to think major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished, major.

[00:00:59]But, you're keeping relative with your shapes, right? If you had to go >> [music] >> gets a bit more confusing. That's basically what playing triads vertically is. And this is a real exercise in patience because it's going to take a while, right? You have to think about skipping notes, what am I playing, what am I doing?

[00:01:18]So, what I used to do is I used to write out all the notes of the scale I'm working on. G A B C D E F sharp G. And I would stare at them and I would go, "Okay, G B D." And then below that, I'd write 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. And I'd go, "Okay, the first triad is a G and that's 1 3 5 and it's going to be G B D."

[00:01:39]I'd go, "The two is going to be 1 flat 3 5 related to the two, but that means 2 4 6 and it's going to be A C E."

[00:01:48]>> [music] >> And I would do that and work through these triads vertically because most people can do that, but not, you know, >> [music] >> do stuff like that, right? So, big gap.

[00:02:09]So, let's play through it vertically.

[00:02:12]Um let's go from that. Now, before I go ahead, little housekeeping.

[00:02:17]Uh the tones you're hearing The tone you're hearing currently is my computer overworking itself for some reason. Um and I don't have a line isolator box for the ToneX yet. But, the tones you're hearing today came from Devin over at Tone Shaper. I'm really thankful.

[00:02:30]Uh I reached out to him and was just kind of like, "Hey, I'm struggling with the ToneX. What's going on?" And he was like, "Oh, let me help you out." Um answered a lot of questions. And then randomly just dropped a drop a Dropbox with his files. And he was like, "Man, check out this pack." And I was like, "Dude."

[00:02:41]So, please um please support him if you can. I plan to myself. Uh but, the tones you're hearing today is Prosonic and Vox captures put together. And it's just unreal.

[00:02:52]So, let's play through major scale vertically as triads. And we'll get to the top and go back down. And going back down is always where I mess up. It's where everyone messes up. So, G major, A minor, [music] B minor, C major, D major, E minor, F sharp diminished, G major.

[00:03:14]Let's keep going. A minor, B minor, C major, D major, [music] E minor, F sharp diminished, G major.

[00:03:23]Back down.

[00:03:25]G major, F sharp diminished, E minor, D minor, D major, C major, B minor, A minor, G. And if you want to keep going, this is where it gets like >> [music] >> That's where like all my brain power for today just went was just figuring out that. Look, it's a little exercise. I'm not going to give the shapes away. I'm not going to tell you how to do it exactly. I do want you to put in a bit of work. Um and I guess this should resolve to me talking about teaching a little bit.

[00:03:57]I love teaching. Um very happy to do it.

[00:04:00]I'm not going to I'm not going to lie and say that like, "Hey, I've got five notes that'll make you Larry Carlton." Or like, "Oh, if you learn that the way I play, like you'll get blah blah blah." No, there's a lot of work and effort that's involved in um in learning this kind of thing. And again, I'm still a student of it myself.

[00:04:17]So, what I implore you to do is if you do want to get a lesson from me, understand is understand that what I teach is giving you knowledge, but not giving you absolutely everything. I don't want to give it all away. Um I think that's antithesis of teaching in many ways because the joy of discovery is learning how you work and how you understand things. But, if you're interested in lessons, drop a comment and I'll share my email or we can message on Instagram and talk about it.

[00:04:41]I'd love to teach Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Sundays as I think I said earlier in the video.

[00:04:46]Anyway, another quick exercise you can do.

[00:04:49]Numbers.

[00:04:50]Pick numbers between one and eight.

[00:04:52]And play through scale in all kinds of ways up and down the neck. This one, two.

[00:04:59]>> [music] [music] >> Um 1 3 6 5 >> [music] >> 6 5 >> [music] >> 6 Oh, sorry.

[00:05:24]>> [music] >> 5 >> [music] >> That's the basic premise, right? Then you'd have to practice it backwards and upwards and topsy-turvy and all that. Look, this is just a quick uh exercise of a piece I'd say I'm teaching. I have to teach um if you're interested in lessons, uh, let's do it. Let's get you rocking on the fretboard. Um, I'm not a snake oil salesman and I don't really do rubbish. I We can talk, hang out. It's just I'm more casual about my teaching, but I'll give you homework and, um, stuff to work on and I can, you know, blah, blah, blah. Um, do all that. So, yeah.

[00:06:06]Anyway, that's it. I'm going to go play a gig.

[00:06:08]Uh, I don't have a line isolator to turn up yet to use the Tone X, but we're going to give it a go and I'm going to run one. So, we'll see what happens. All right.

[00:06:17]Cheers. Enjoy.