Hi, Tyson Farmer here. When you are memorizing your major and minor triads (or notes that make up major and minor chords), it can get a little overwhelming when you see all the lists of triads you have to work through. Let's simplify things a little bit:
1) First, concentrate on only the major triads with natural note name root notes to keep things simple. This means no chord names with sharps(♯) or flats (♭) attached.
Here is that list of triads (chords):
AC♯E
BD♯F♯
CEG
DF♯A
EG♯B
FAC
GBD
Notice how the first note never has a sharp or flat?
2) Next, group all the similar triads together. Notice how some triads from the list above have no sharps at all, while others have one on the middle note? Any middle note of a triad is called the "3rd" of the chord (more on that below). Also, notice only one of these chords has two sharps, the B chord? Let's group them in similar groups:
No ♯s: 1♯ in middle: 2♯s:
CEG AC♯E BD♯F♯
FAC DF♯A
GBD EG♯B
Now they're easier to memorize, since you can group similar ones together mentally.
3) Once you've memorized the above groups, flat the 3rd of any triad to get its corresponding minor triad. In other words, you take the middle note of any triad and apply a flat to it. If it's already got a sharp, the flat will cancel out that sharp and make it minor.
Major-> Minor
Ex: CEG -> CE♭G
DF♯A -> DFA
BD♯F♯ -> BDF♯ etc.
Notice how you didn't need to memorize an entire list of minor triads? You just memorize the majors and apply the flat to the middle note any time you need that major triad's corresponding minor!
It is of course a good idea to eventually memorize all your triads ny heart so you don't have to do all these mental gymnastics every time, but this is a quick trick to get them planted in your head for using them in songs! Your Lessonface teacher will be able to give you many more music theory tricks and tips like this to make learning your instrument much more fun and less work.
Tyson Farmer
www.lessonface/TysonFarmer
