How to Identify Triads in Actual Music

Chord Symbols

This lesson assumes that you already know how to identify chords using Chord Symbols.

To review Chord Symbols see Understanding Chord Symbols and Understanding Chord/Bass Symbols.

Key Signatures

One common mistake people make when identifying chords is to forget to check the key signature.

If you forget to check the key signature, you may think the above chord is an F chord, when in reality, it is an Fm chord. Always remember to look at the key signature when identifying chords.

To review Key Signatures see Major Key Signatures and Relative and Parallel Keys.

The Grand Staff

The notes of the chord will often be distributed between two or more staves. The Grand Staff is the most common example of this.

To review the Grand Staff go to Grand Staff

Too Many Notes

It is common to double some or all of the notes in a triad. Therefore, a triad may be written using four or more notes. The following chord is still an A chord, like the one above.

It is also possible that a chord will have more than four unique note names or have notes that don't fit in a normal triad. We will deal with altered chords and extended chords in later lessons.

Stacking in 3rds

To identify a chord, you will first need to stack it in 3rds and remove any duplicate notes. Don't forget the original bass, though, because you will need to compare the bass to the root of the chord to see if the chord is inverted. If the bass is not the same as the root, you will need to add it to the Chord Symbol using Chord/Bass notation.

Let's do this step-by-step using the chord below.

1. Remove Duplicate Notes: Listing the notes from top to bottom, you can see we have a C, G, C, Eb. if you remove the duplicate C, you have a C, G, Eb. Let's place them in close position on a treble clef to make it easier to identify.
          
2. Stack in Thirds: You can now move the C down an octave to stack the notes in 3rds.
           
3. Label the Chord: At this point it should be easy to identify the chord as a Cm chord. However, the original chord has an Eb in the bass rather than the root of the chord (C). Since this is an inverted chord, you will need to add the Eb to the chord symbol using Chord/Bass notation. Therefore, the final chord symbol is Cm/Eb. When identifying a chord it is very important to remember the difference between the bass and the root of the chord. If the bass is not the same as the root of the chord you must use chord/bass notation to identify the bass note.
   Cm/Eb          
            

To review Chord/Bass Symbols see Understanding Chord/Bass Symbols

Arpeggios

An Arpeggio is when the notes of a chord are played one after another in time. All of the notes of the following example make up one chord, so you should identify it using one chord symbol

Too Few Notes (Incomplete Chord)

Sometimes a triad will be missing a note or even two.

• Missing 5th - This is quite common. In almost all cases, if the notes of a two note chord can be stacked a third apart, they should be considered the root and third of a triad.
  Fm       
  Notice that in this case the missing fifth is assumed to be the C natural that would naturally occur in the key signature.
• Missing 3rd - This is also common, especially in ancient music and contemporary music. If the notes of a two note chord can be stacked a fifth apart, they should be considered a triad missing the 3rd. In popular music this is often called a Power Chord by guitar players.
Fm       
Notice that in this case the missing third is assumed to be the A♭ that would naturally occur in the key signature.
• Missing Root - Unless the music is only two parts, a missing root is very rare. For the listener to hear it as a triad with a missing root, the musical context would have to strongly suggest the root either before or after the chord. Because it is so rare, we will not be including it in the next exercise.
• Only one note - If there is only one note it will normally be considered the root of a triad that is missing the 3rd and 5th. The primary exception is when that one note is part of an arpeggio.
Fm      
• For now we will lable these chords as complete triads, but in a later lesson we will look at how to lable altered chords such as these.

Sustained Notes

Watch out for notes that are sustaining from an earlier chord. In the following example notice that the C, which lasts for four beats, is still sounding during the second chord. If you don't notice the C you may mistakenly think the second chord is an Eb chord that is missing the 5th.

The Next Exercise

In the next exercise you will be using Chord Symbols to indentify triads in the grand staff with key signatures. The chords may include of any of the above types of triads.