When learning music, it’s often the case that unpacking and understanding a seemingly small and simple concept can lead to enormous breakthroughs that have an immeasurable impact on your playing, knowledge of music theory, and musicianship. In traditional Western music, one of the most basic harmonic concepts is that of the triad.

Music theory establishes the backbone of everything that we play on our instruments as musicians. And, while parsing through complex music theory concepts can sometimes feel tedious or maybe overwhelming, the key is to break down one simpler topic at a time and apply it on our instrument. One such concept is the relationship between the major scale and the quality of the chord associated with each note in the major scale. Understanding how the major scale and these major and minor chord qualities relate will help take both your improvisation and rhythm guitar playing to the next level.

When first learning to play guitar, most students begin by focusing on full, open-position chords, sometimes referred to as “cowboy chords.” From there, tackling barre chords and learning comprehensive, multi-octave harmonic voicings is next. However, in many styles of music and guitar playing, the use of larger multi-octave chord voicings and barre chords is not always necessary or even encouraged. In Americana and blues guitar styles, for example, smaller two, three, and four-note chords are frequently used and are critical to the aesthetic of the genre and style.

One of the most beautiful elements of blues, country, and Americana guitar playing is the flow between acoustic and electric tonalities, gritty and clean soundscapes, slow and fast tempos, fingerstyle and flatpick techniques, and more. All of these different approaches and tonal textures are utilized throughout these iconic genres, and thus, it’s important for blues, country, and Americana guitarists to be able to execute all these various methods. An artist who consistently accomplishes this in spades is five-time Grammy Award-winning guitarist, singer, songwriter, and performer, Keb’ Mo’.