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In previous lessons we’ve learned about major, minor and diminished triads. In this lesson we’ll round
out the triads with augmented triads. We’ll take a look at the interval structure that creates the
Like all triads, an augmented triad contains three notes. It’s built by stacking two major 3rd intervals.
We can explore augmented triad shapes across the fretboard using string groupings. Augmented triads
are unique in that on any given string grouping, the root position, first and second inversions are all the
same shape. This gives us only four distinct shapes to learn across all of the string groupings.
In the diagram below you can see the shapes up the fretboard. The triad shapes will repeat up and
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When I think of augmented triads, one song in particular stands out and it’s Eddie Money’s “Baby Hold
On”. The main riff is a back and forth between the I chord, D major, and the augmented I chord, D+.
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Then the D augmented chord is used to build tension in the transition to the Em7 chord.
If you notice in this progression, the 5th ascends chromatically from the perfect 5th (D major chord),
augmented 5th (D+ chord), major 6th (D6 chord), minor 7th (D7 chord). This releases nicely into the
Wrap Up
In this lesson we learned about augmented triads. Because of the symmetry of the stacked major 3rds,
each string grouping produces only one unique shape. This makes it a little more tricky to identify the
root position and inversions as the shape itself won’t make it obvious. With these triads you really have
While augmented triads certainly aren’t as commonly used as the major and minor triads, they do have