Hello, I know that tomo emphasizes the importance of triads, how to figure out how to play a major triad (root, third, fifth), and I understand what inversions are. What I'm struggling with is how are triads applied in a musical context? If a song is playing a C E G chord progression, I don't feel like just simply playing a C E G triad over chord changes sounds very musical to me. If anything might sound boring, even if it works in theory. You could opt to play the individual notes instead of strumming the triad, but there's only 3 notes so seems limiting in isolation. So maybe that's the key, maybe major scales, pentatonic scales, chromatic scale, etc. are combined with triads to make good sounding solos/melodies. That begs the question, how do you combine different scales and ideas with triads fluidly to make something sound good, and are there any videos that touch on this topic or will there be? Just seems like there's a lot of videos that show how to play triads, but it doesn't sound good to me in isolation so feel like there's something missing and would like some insight. Thanks so much if Tomo responds or anyone in the community!
I try to think of triads as the "backbone" of the underlying chord progression. These points support the rest of the weight of everything else that it is possible to do with the remaining tones available on the fretboard.
I don't think the intent is to demonstrate how to use them "in isolation", but to train your ear how they sound over top of chords in the context of a song, so that you can use them as building blocks for later ideas. And in addition to the ear training, it provides a mental map for the landscape of the fretboard, so no matter where your hand is, you are never more than a few frets away from a set of notes that sound good there for whatever chord you're on in the progression. This only comes with repetition and really listening closely.
The "later ideas" come with the hard work of listening to music, and playing it... A LOT. And working out how different artists drape interesting phrases and notes over the skeletal framework of the chords and triads. What counts as "interesting phrases and notes" depends on what your personal taste is and what "sounds good" means to you. And there are a lot of good candidates in the ideas that you mentioned... scale tones, chromatic tones, modes etc. All that stuff is covered in the Foundations and Theory.
From the exploration that I've done so far, Tomo provides hundreds of interesting phrases and note choices by example. Tons and tons of examples. But, what I don't think you'll ever find is a video that says "use this secret sauce to make tasty solos". He gives the spices to grind. You make the sauce.
The blues ideas are usually the most familiar to most people, and that's where I started. When you hear something and think to yourself "how does he do that?", that is only step zero. And the steps after that are left to the student using the guidance in the foundations and music theory sections... and the video player and the "slow down" button.
He'll quite often tell you exactly what he's doing, for example, using a diminished arpeggio over a dominant chord, or starting on a third, or stepping chromatically from one degree to another. But learning what all those things are and their sounds is the process of analysis, learning, and preparation. Wash, rinse, repeat. You would almost never do all that thinking while actually performing a song. Nor would you want to.
I've been told to "just play Dorian over a i-IV7 vamp and you'll sound like Santana" a million times in my life, but it didn't stick until I did the work to pick apart the degrees and what they mean in relation to the chords. And comparing it to a regular minor blues and working out what those differences are. When you boil away all the extraneous notes, there are the triads underneath it all, supporting the progressions and telling you what is happening.
This is a great question!
Tomo touches upon this in this lesson: FTR 03 Major and minor Triads on Strings 3 2 1 - Use Do Re Mi to Connect Triads
In the video he plays a simple single note line, side by side, followed by two triad inversions vertically. Is this perhaps a good formula to practice? Single notes from scale side by side, starting and ending on chord tones, followed by triads.
I wish Tomo would expand on this topic in future videos.
I think this video demonstrates both the building block nature of triads and arpeggios and what you can do with them to connect them in a musical context. He's using rhythms, chromaticism, chord tones, the blue note, scale tones, pentatonic notes, bending.... all coming out in an expressive and conversational way, while he's telling you what he's doing along the way.
Hey delayed response, but thanks so much everyone for your guys' take on the topic! I'll definitely check that video out, Brad and heliosphan.