Hey Friend,

Okay, so triads. Three notes, when played together, make a chord. Which leads me to think I need to step back and define a handful of chord forms so that when we talk about them, we're all on the same page.

Let's look at the most common first. You're going to see these chords the most in your Rock journey.

First off, when we talk about a major chord, we will always be dealing with three primary notes: the first, third and fifth notes from the major scale. It doesn't matter what chord you're talking about - A, F#, Bb, G - each major chord is constructed from those three notes. 

Yes, it's true you can finger and play more than three notes when you strum a chord. But if you write out the note from each string, you'll find you are still only dealing with three notes.

The minor chord is again three specific notes. In this case, the third note is lowered by one half step or semitone. On guitar, that's one fret. 

Since we're sticking with the key of D major, the exercise shows the D major and D minor chords. You'll notice these aren't the normal open chords. I've done this because I wanted you to see the chord structures in their root inversion, meaning the notes are lined up like they would be in a major scale.

If you recall, an inversion is simply a rearrangement of the notes in a chord. The note order could be 1, 3, 5 (Root inversion), or they could be 3, 5, 1 (First inversion), or 5, 1, 3 (Second inversion). In the case of a D major chord, D, F#, A, or F#, A, D, or A, D, F#. 

Regardless of which inversion you use, a D chord is a D chord. You will hear subtle differences based on which note gets played first, but the sum of it is still D major. So don't worry about knowing the difference between the three inversions at this point. Those get more important when you look at playing arpeggios and finger picking, but for now just know that it's perfectly acceptable (and sometimes preferred) to change the chord note order around.

Look at the exercise tab and listen to the file. Then practice playing the two chords - D major and D minor in their root inversion forms.

Thanks again for your patience with me over the last few weeks. What a roller coaster it's been. Or maybe more appropriately like the Teacup ride, since I've gotten spun around so much!

Peace~

Dave