Triad Pairs

[Budda]

One of the "Modes" Threads had a mention (warmingtone maybe?)of "Synthetic Scales" and some of the ways in which you could come up with various Intervallic Structures to play when improvising.

Anyway, it made me think of something I often use myself:

TRIAD PAIRS

Just the Diatonic Triads in a Key. This will open the door, for a Non-Diatonic Triad to help "Hear" the Altered Notes.

EX: Key Of G

G + Am

G B D + A C E

Works great over Maj. or Dom. Chords, as it contains no 7th. But, it has the R, 3, 5, 2/9, 4/11, 6/13.

I particularly like using the 4 as a nice Tension.

Or,

G + D

G B D + D F# A

R 3 5 M7 2/9

Both of those work well over Pop and Traditional Tunes. Great for Bluegrass and Country Tunes also. And I really like them over older Swing type Tunes.

Bluesy? Well, now we're talkin'!

How about:

G + Dm

G B D F A

Using the Non-Diatonic Dm Triad, you get an F. A b7.

So, R 3 5 b7 9

G9

Ahhhh!

How about something a little more "Modern"?

2 Major Triads, a Whole Step apart, will work great!

G + A

G B D + A C# E

R 3 5 2/9 #4/#11 13

G13#11(no7)

Again, no "7". So, works great over Major, or Dominant Chords/Keys.

(As you can see, I really like the ambiguity of no 7 to pin things down. Save that Tone for later. Tension Baby! LOL)

2 Minor Triads, a Whole Step Apart? Let's see;

Gm + Am

G Bb D + A C E

R b3 5 + 2/9 4/11 6/13

Gm13(no7) or, Gm6/9add11

Lots of possibilities.

One thing about the 2 Triads a Whloe Step apart, is that they are very easy to visualize. And, it allows for some nice Symmetrical type fingerings. A great way to start employing "Altered" Tones. Once you get a few Lines and Phrases under your fingers, you might just start preferring some of those "Altered" Tones.

Anyway, LOTS to work with! Polychords, Altered Tones, etc.

In fact, this is a favorite Chord Voicing of mine:

Low to High: E/3 A/X D/0 G/2 B/3 E/2

WADDAYATHINK?

[Ridge runner]

Way cool man! I'm gonna learn these on piano..Do you know any cool Jon Lord type chord voicing? I've been playing with root,fifth/sus 4th type stuff -lol cause I'ma just starting out..

[RCinMempho]

You missed the best one of all.

I like to go one step down.

D + C

D F# A C E G

R 3 5 7 9 13

Slide down two frets and slide back up. Work chord tones down and back between the two chords. Make ascending or descending patterns from those chord shifts. This move is a staple chicken picken move.

In blues, this makes a common lick. Using an A chord shape, barre it accross the high E to make a 6th chord. Do this on the 7th fret G-B-E strings. You have D-F#-B. Then slide down two frets and you have C-E-A of a D9 (7th, 9th, 5th).

[weakendwarrior]

Larry Carlton is THE master of this type of thing IMHO.

[fakeocaster]

Cool post. Ive always found this approach more intuitive than memorising scales and modes

[Budda]

Yeah, keep it up guys! Digging the ideas here.

And remember, TAB is welcome too!

[klasaine]

Eb and C = C7#9
Em and C = Cmaj7
G and C = Cmaj9
Bm and C = Cmaj9#11
F# and C = C7b5 or F#7b5 (tri-tone thingy)
E and C = C13#11
A and C = C13b9 (you could add the b7 of C on this one)
E and C = Cmaj7b6 (#5)

G and Cm = Cm/maj9

*You can also get these altered and extended chord voicings by playing these two triads ... or as much as you can grab on a guitar.

[Larry F]

Originally Posted by klasaine

Eb and C = C7#9
Em and C = Cmaj7
G and C = Cmaj9
Bm and C = Cmaj9#11
F# and C = C7b5 or F#7b5 (tri-tone thingy)
E and C = C13#11
A and C = C13b9 (you could add the b7 of C on this one)
E and C = Cmaj7b6 (#5)

G and Cm = Cm/maj9

*You can also get these altered and extended chord voicings by playing these two triads ... or as much as you can grab on a guitar.

F# and C = C7b5 or F#7b5 (tri-tone thingy) and Stravinsky's Petrouchka chord.

[warmingtone]

Now you guys are talking...

This approach (I think I got a lot of it from Larry Carlton in the late seventies ;)) has always fascinated me. Not only are these polytonal chord things cool...a lot can be done with pentatonics as well which I think I mentioned (a very common LC thing...he even has some "chart" as I recall for systematically getting more "outisde" and back "in")

I did a bit of a "study" of combining pentatonics...but a lot of my playing ideas come from overlaying one tonality over another.

It is not that difficult for a player armed with the pentatonic scale to combine two, either together or separately for some really good sounds for instance.

Not sure if TAB would help, but I will give it a go...I do sit here with a guitar by the computer and play this stuff while typing.

...

A cool way to explore some of these things is to play under a drone...so plucking an open A string or playing Major to get that sound in your head...

Some of the more interesting sounds come from overlaying simple things like Bm (or D major) pentatonic over A major say...a very open airy "disassociated" kind of sound. Compare that to say Em (or G major) for a similar or more "foreboding" effect. (much of this comes from the avoidance of the 3rd in both, the addition of the b7 in the latter).

These closely related pentatonics sound very "polytonal", both the above examples share the root and 5th of the underlying chord and sound like A/D and A/G 11thy kind of things.

...

A cool 'dissonant' use is to pre-empt a chord change, say from I-IV by playing Bbm (or C#major) pentatonic for a bar just before the change...not sure if TAB helps, but this kind of thing illustrates it I guess...

Amaj...............(Bbm-P)......Dmaj.....

----------------------4-6-|-5----------------------
------------2---2-4-6-----|---7-7~~~-------------
--------2-4---3-----------|------------------------
----2-4--------------------|--0~~~~~---------------
-0~~~~~~~~-------------|---------------------
----------------------------|--------------------

You can of course get all "analytical" about it...this kind of approach gives a line with the b2,maj3,#4,b6(or#5),maj7...or the notes A#,C#,D#,E#,G#, all notes obviously "alien" to both A and D major, it has dissonance yet does not really imply a dominant sound with that Maj7 tone in there...but such moves provide significant "tension and release" that makes things resolve in a satisfying if unconventional way. Jazz guys might know this kind of thing as "sideslipping"

...

But just the simple combination of triads as is being described is such a cool thing...simple and effective. Very easy to just overlay another chord in a single note line to get cool sounds what ever material or style one plays in...

Being able to hear them as a "polychord" is great as you will be able to get a "feel" for what things can sound like if you play a D triad over a C in a tune perhaps. A keyboard is perhaps an "easier" thing to hear these things with than the six note limitations of the guitar.

The reason I have given to using pentatonics a lot of the time is that it provides a neat framework of notes with an expected combination of intervals, is very easy to "see" and grab as required and is easier to avoid a lot of leaping in thirds that triadic things tend to give...or the need to "synthesize" a scale up...but then at times, the more angular lines might be what people are after....

Amaj7..........(C#maj triad)..Dmaj7.....................Amaj7

-------------------------|------------9---7----|-------
-------2-3-5-6----------|-------7-10-------10-|-5~~~~
---2-4---------6--6-----|-----7----------------|--------
-----------------6--6---|---7------------------|---------
-0~~~~~------------8-|-9--------------------|----------
------------------------|----------------------|------------

Of course these are a few obvious lines to give a sense of these kinds of sounds..overlaying one tonality over another.

A more "sythesized" polytonal approach may be to add the notes of one triad and another...so, Amaj (A,C#,E) and C#maj (C#,E#,G#), giving you A,C#,E,E#(F),G#...an unusual pentatonic (5 note) set of intervals...kind of "arabicesque" on it's own...in use it could function similar to the above examples...

Amaj.....................Amaj7 (A/C# "scale"...Dmaj7........

-------------2-4-5-|-4----------------|-------9-7-------
-------2-3-5-------|---6-5------------|-----7-----7~~~
---2-4-------------|-------6----------|----7-------------
-------------------|---------7-6------|---7--------------
-0~~~~-----------|-------------7-8-|-9----------------
-------------------|------------------|-------------------

These are of course "instructive" examples that I played to illustrate the principle...hopefully they give some more "ideas" to the sounds that can be created...of course, this is only this A and C# triad...there are any number of combintations, either on their own overlayed over a tonality as in the former examples, or combined into a "synthesized" combination of triads as in this later one.

In these examples I have used them to create a kind of functional harmony (a transition from one chord to another through tension and release, much as how a V7-I progression works, without the dom7)...but such devices can be useful where there is no change...where the whole thing is say Amaj7 and you want to add tension and release into a line even though (or because) the harmony isn't giving it to you.

Or maybe you just want to add some outside sounds that make "sense"...a line like this still sounds like Amaj7 with the A and C# triads added together...

---------------4-5------------
---------2-5-6-----5~~~-----
---2-1-2----------------------
-------------------------------
-0~~~~~~~-------------------
--------------------------------
Even though it adds in that F note...the pentatonic combination approach would lead me to play perhaps...

-----------------4-5-------------------------
--------2-4-6-7-----5~~~~~~~~-----------
----2-4--------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
--0~~~~~----------------------------------
--------------------------------------------

The #4,#5 kind of "circle" the 5th degree of the scale making the resolution when it does appear stronger...bit of a lydina kind of sound, without learning a bunch of "modes" or creating your own by combining triads...

...

Greats stuff...glad it was brought up. This kind of thing really got to me when it was "revealed" to me...of course you have to "play" the stuff to appreciate what it can do, but it does seem to lead to note choices and lines that you wouldn't otherwise play by using a very simple principle that is easy to apply without a lot of "thought" when it gets time to use them!

[Budda]

Okay!

Man, I'm gonna have to work through these tips everyone is sharing.

[Budda]

Another great approach, here:

http://www.guitaredge.com/index.php?...sons&Itemid=93

I like the Sequence like ideas. Really opens up some possibilities with some of these ideas!

[smoke]

Larry Carlton is THE master of this type of thing IMHO

Gary Campbell and Jerry Bergonzi are the masters of this type of thing. They even wrote 'the books' on them.

Triad pairs are farily commonly called 'hexatonics', as an fyi. If you google that phrase, you will find plenty.

[warmingtone]

I'd not heard of "triadic pairs" as a term before, maybe there is a narrower sense, but the principle is simple.

"Hexatonic" just means a 6 note scale, much as a pentatonic suggests a 5 note scale...adding triads does not necessarily result in a 6 note set...

It's not even necessarily a "outside" sounding thing...F and C for instance gives you C,E,G plus F,A,C or C,E,F,G,A...a very inside "pentatonic" tone set. G and C yet another...C,D,E,G,B. Both are all "inside" pentatonics with a different set compared to the pentatonic maj/min that people tend to rely on yet may inspire a different kind of melodic line.

Even the example that I used above of quite disparate chords not from the major scale diatonic family such as A and C# share a note to produce a pentatonic A,C#,E,E#,G#...

If you were to consider adding maj/min triads...well obviously C and Am produces the Am7 (or C6) arpeggio...A,C,E,G...a 4 note set...perhaps a quadratonic?

I often look at a note and try and see another triad that can hang off it...kind of like a "pivot" tone...so say an Am chord, I might be thinking, hmm Am9 so...A,C,E and the ninth perhaps the B in Em...Am+Em=A,B,C,E,G= the Am9 arpeggio (1,9,3,5,7) and/or yet another "pentatonic" tone set.

If you used the "pentatonic pairs" idea I raised above...
AmP+EmP=A,C,D,E,G+E,G,A,B,D=A,B,C,D,E,G you often get a "hexatonic" set very close to the minor scale Am less a 6th). Similarly AmP+DmP=Am less a 9th/2nd degree.

The real "power" of such sets is that it can inspire a different kind of melodic line.

Also, they don't need to be combined but played 'one tonality over another'...Em over Am will give the sense of Am9 with the 5th,7th and 9th tones only, but forgoing the more obvious root and third that define the chord...so you need not "think" in terms of 'arithmetic' and adding things together to make a new scale set, just having a feel for how one triad sounds over another will allow the free use of these things as required...know that on an Am chord a bit of Em will produce this kind of effect.

Mike Stern is great, perhaps he can sound a little too sequential at times...but one of those clips shows that this principle need not apply only to triads built from adding thirds...any 3+3 notes can work to produce interesting tone sets, in sequence, or mixed up into a "scale"

...

One thing that I have always been taken with is harmony based on intervals other than "tertiary harmony"...notes built by stacking thirds. Quartal harmony sounds great...as in mile's "so what" to give that impressionistic sound...

-5-------
-6-------
-5-------
-5-------
-5-------
--------

If you take that top A and put it on the bottom, you get the stack revealed...A,D,G,C,F, a 4th between each tone...reordered again you get a valid "tone set"....D,F,G,A,C...oh, what have we here! D minor pentaonic, our old favorite.

I wrote an article about this somewhere, I called it a "magic chord" for generating pentatonic tonalities...if you extend the "quartal harmony" further...

A,D,G,C,F,Bb,Eb,Ab,Db,Gb,B,E,(A)= or backwards around the circle of fifths, and the entire chromatic scale...but more than I could or perhaps should go into now.

"Harmony in fifths" produces other interesting sounds, like the famous "police chord" (songs like message in a bottle, or every move)

---------------
---------------
------8---------
----6-------9-----11---etc...
--4-------7-----9-----
--------5-----7-------

Like "quartal harmony" it goes forward around the circle of fifths and opens up the chromatic scale (or all the notes) in interesting ways...plus provides an interesting alternate "sound" to tertiary harmonic approaches.

...

It may be that my posts seem to stray a little far...but if you think a little further out of the box or perhaps into something like quartal harmony to derive tone sets, you can get very interesting results that open up the entire chromatic scale if you wish, or simply generate the garden variety pentatonic scale.

If we were to take the "so what" quartal harmony thing...we got Dm pentatonic in a chord...but if you go just one degree higher, you add in the note Bb, another degree, Eb, another Ab...so you can generate perhaps a quartal triad sets of D,G,C,F,Bb,Eb or reordered...D,Eb,F,G,A,Bb,C...which gives you D phrygian, so another way to generate various modes...the interesting thing in quartal harmony is that the natutal tone set (without altering b5s and such as in tertiary harmony) of any quartal chord, if extended as far as you can go, includes all 12 notes. So on one extreme you are getting the full chromatic scale in chord extentions or on a lower level, familiar sounds like the minor pentatonic or common modal tone sets.

...

The cool thing about this kind of thing is that you can get these different colours without having to think things through to the nth degree...do as Miles did (or perhaps more accurately Evans ) on Kind of Blue or Andy Summers did with the Police and reharmonize tertiary material with 4ths and 5ths...or maybe just use some of these ideas to generate different or even familiar tone sets with a different "sensibility"

[smoke]

"Hexatonic" just means a 6 note scale, much as a pentatonic suggests a 5 note scale...adding triads does not necessarily result in a 6 note set...

Not sure if this was directed at me, but I didn't say it did. Hexatonics is a commonly used word to describe triad pairs w/ no repeated notes in the jazz realm. See Jerry Bergonzi's book in his 'Inside Improv' series, Number 7 if memory serves. There are several other books on this topic, all require the ability to read music. Well worth the investment if this is a sound that appeals to you.

[warmingtone]

No...not "directing" anything at anyone..."hexatonic" is a term I have only come across in the literal sense, I stated at the beginning, I have not even heard of the term "triadic pair"...I have been aware and used the principle though for some time though, whatever it is called.

My only intention in my posts is to provide some actual resource or food for thought or discussion, an alternative to a "vox pop" reply or referral to other materials...maybe broaden the scope of things a little for anyone who is interested now or somewhere down the line. Again, not a shot at anyone at all!

While I have studied "jazz" both formally and in performance, a lot of my education was in early, traditional and modern composition techniques...poly-tonal techniques have been around a long time and most likely predate jazz and have an application in any music. There may well be applications of terms that I have not come across with narrower meanings, I'm here to learn as well.

A lot of the kind of things I have discussed have not come from "books" but from a lot of self study building on principles that I have been exposed to along the way. The intention is purely to share...somewhere down the track someone might take these kinds of ideas and run with them.

Some of these things can be adapted as an "alternative" theory, as I tried to demonstrate, a lot of these ideas generate very traditional "sounds" like the pentatonics or modes, they may encourage a different "sound" or encapsulate traditional approaches.

I did look at some of those links, the "triadic pairs" that I saw described seemed to relate back to traditional chord theory and jazz approaches fairly heavily, there are alternatives than to translate things back into the jazz language. That certain triadic pairs create a sound that translate into an 11th chord or whatever is true, but the essence of these things is that they have a certain "sound", sometimes very familiar, at other times a new way to hear and apply things. So, I do tend, as is my way, to try and give actual examples of how these things work, not so much simply a referral to others work.

[klasaine]

Originally Posted by smoke

Not sure if this was directed at me, but I didn't say it did. Hexatonics is a commonly used word to describe triad pairs w/ no repeated notes in the jazz realm. See Jerry Bergonzi's book in his 'Inside Improv' series, Number 7 if memory serves. There are several other books on this topic, all require the ability to read music. Well worth the investment if this is a sound that appeals to you.

+1. His books are killer. you do have to read though and understand basic chord/key/scale theory.

*For those of you that have Ted Greene's 'Chord Chemistry' there's a table on page 12 of many triad over triad chords that combine to make altered and extended chords.

[Budda]

Bump.

Just looking to see if anybody has been working with these?

[smoke]

Just looking to see if anybody has been working with these?

They are a critical part of my linear concept so I work with them every time I touch the guitar to practice, write, or play. I consider them invaluable for outlining or stretching a given tonality in a tight, focused format. I can't imagine my playing w/o them at this point.