What is a Major Triad?

Series Summary

The mandolin belongs to the guitar family of musical instruments. Considerably smaller, the mandolin has eight strings which are paired together in four courses that are strummed or plucked to produce sound. Mandolins are typically tuned the same as a violin, but can be tuned to produce the same fretting patterns as the standard guitar. Believed to have derived from Italian culture, the Mandolin is used in a variety of music genres including Bluegrass, Country and Western, Folk, and Rock and Roll. Even Greek and Indian cultures have incorporated the Mandolin into Kantades and Carnatic music.

In this free video series, our expert Levin Schwartz will teach you everything you need to know about major triads on the mandolin. He will tell you how to play a major triad in root position, 1st inversion, 2nd inversion, and a G major scale. He'll also tell you how to play major triads in 1st position, 2nd position, and 3rd position in both the low and high octaves; he'll even tell you how to add a 4th to the major triads.

Video Transcript

"How you're doing. I'm here to show you an approach to string instruments focus around chords and chords construction. The idea is that we are going to look at triads. Triads are thee note chords. So, we're going to use three strings on this instrument at a time. We're going to focus on these three strings first and then on these three string first. Again, three notes make up a triad. So, you can build up your basic chords using those three strings at a time. This approach is also going to be focus on the shape of the chord and how it looks. This is my first chord position which I'll eventually get into more detail with but the roots here is on the lowest string and here is the next set, we're moving up, the root is on a different string on this string here. And here is the final approach with the root being on the highest string. It is identification basic upon were the root is because the mandolin is tune the same way. You can then spread it out across the instrument and maybe extrapolate and add another note to it working across the instrument."