Here's a fantastic exercise routine for not only nailing your triads off of the 3rd, 4th and 5th strings, but this approach will also help you get better with knowing the chords that are located within major and minor key signatures. 



This workout is based upon getting to know and apply the chord harmony cycle that exists within key centers. 

By running through this exercise you'll get the opportunity to review major and minor triad harmony and practice the root position triad shapes along the guitar fingerboard... 

New to triads??? ...If triads (and triad harmony in key signatures) are new guitar study areas for you, this drill will need to be approached slowly to build up the initial awareness.

Then, once that part of the learning curve is out of the way, you'll be able to begin some good solid practice with using these important chord shapes all along the neck.

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DIATONIC HARMONY:
Building a chord harmony involves moving through a key applying the appropriate "Diatonic" chord quality off of each step of the scale. Sometimes this will get referred to as a establishing a, "Chord Scale."

For example; if we were going to do this in the key of "Bb Major" we'd start by choosing a string to work from, then we'd construct a series of diatonic triads built off of that guitar string from the root of the scale, (which is "Bb").

3rd STRING TRIADS:
Step 1). Study the chords that make up a keys harmonized scale.



Once you've become aware of the chord shapes (involved in harmonizing the key), and once you can do a fairly decent job of playing through the chord patterns (smoothly one over to the next), you're ready to begin working on the exercise with a metronome.

So, now let me show you how this key of "Bb Major" triad work-out can be done in time, using a metronome...



Step 2). 3rd string triad study. Harmonized "Bb" scale (using a metronome).






4th STRING TRIADS:
Step 3). 4th string triad study. Harmonized "F" scale (use a metronome).
 
The next work-out that we're going to organize our triads around will involve taking the harmonized triads across the neck playing the patterns between the 4th guitar string to the 2nd string.

For this drill, we'll use an "F Major" key center. Understand that the chord shapes need to become memorized (prior to building up speed and applying the study with a metronome).

Here's the "F Major" key triads with our root notes played along the 4th string.




Before we complete our workout (off of the 5th guitar string), I wanted to switch tonalities of our key. What we're going to do is have some fun flipping that key of "F major" harmony (that we just played through) over to the Minor tonality.


MINOR:
Step 4). 4th string triad study. Harmonized "F Minor" scale (use a metronome).

 


Above is the same fourth string workout that we just did. However now I've flipped the key's tonality from Major over to the key of "F Minor." Play the workout in time using a metronome!

RELATIVE TONALITY:
Performing the harmonized triad workout off of the Major and Minor tonality is an absolute must for two important reasons...

#1). Gaining a solid idea for how the shapes move along the neck from both the major and the minor tonal center harmonies.

#2). For getting better at the Relative Major and Minor key relationships...



5th STRING TRIADS:
Now, let's run through our final workout, building a harmonized triad exercise off of the 5th string root... Here's the key of "C Major" /played using a metronome - as a harmonized triad workout between the 5th string to the third string...

Step 5). 5th string triad study. Harmonized "F Minor" scale (use a metronome).




CONCLUSION:
If you wanted to, you could play all of these exact same 5th string root shapes (that we just performed off of our 5th string root), once again off of the 6th string root. It's up to you. All of the 5th string root patterns will however be the exact same as the 5th string patterns. So, you might feel like it's a little redundant to perform them all over again. But, like I said this is up to you.

I would however suggest that you work on both the major and the minor tonalities. That would be a nice addition to maintain with this daily workout. The main thing overall is that this exercise works great for learning all of your harmonized keys, and for learning the common root position triads across the neck.

By playing through them with a metronome, you'll get better at your timing and at each execution of all these chords' fingering patterns on your guitar!



VISIT THE WEB-SITE:
Thanks for joining me, If you'd like to Find Out What You Should Learn Next on Guitar - take a look at the courses over on my website at CreativeGuitarStudio.com.

My step-by-step; Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced courses will cover what you need to know, along with how to be able to move forward and become the best player that you can be.

I've worked on these courses since 1992 and I feel that all together they're the best guitar program you'll ever find. The courses will help you learn to identify what's required to get you up to the next level of guitar playing, in a very organized way, that makes sense.

So, I look forward to helping you further at CreativeGuitarStudio.com ...Until next time - take care and we'll catch up again on the next lesson. Bye for now!