 Hi! This is vertical theory lesson 3. Up to this point in the vertical theory we have been dealing with triads. We've learned major, minor triads, augmented and diminished triads and we have now learned the three different inversions of a triad. Now today we're going to go really a step further and start talking about diatonic triads and how triads operate within a key. So there's a lot to learn in this lesson and you might want to watch this video a couple of times to make sure that you really really get this before you even start doing the assignment. But let's go ahead and go to work and see if we can get this introduced. When we're dealing with diatonic triads what we're really doing is creating a triad over each step of a major scale. Now for today's purposes I think we'll start with a G major scale. Now hopefully at this point you're used to creating a major scale and I don't have to go over the whole step half step pattern. But just as a matter of review a G major scale has one sharp and that one sharp is F sharp. So we have G, A, B, C, D, E, F sharp and G. Okay. Now if we were to build a triad on each step of this scale in the key of G we would do so in the following fashion. We would build a triad on the G, so G, B and D would be our triad. On the second note of the scale A, C and E. Third step of the scale B, D, F, C, E, G and actually I should have made this an F sharp because there is an F sharp in the G major scale. C, E, G then D, F sharp, A, E, G, B, F sharp, A, C and G, B, D just like the first one. Now we've made those triads over top of each step of the scale. Now here's the interesting thing. If we were to go through and analyze each of those triads for whether they are major, minor, diminished or augmented we would find and we'll find this when we analyze the triads above any major scale. We will find that the first, the triad built on the first step of the scale is always a major, so we use a capital Roman numeral to indicate that. We'll find that the triad built on the fourth step of the scale is major and the fifth step of the scale is major and of course the last step it's exactly the same as the first so it really starts back over at one. Those are our three major triads. I'm not going to take the time to analyze them right now but you can do that. You could go back to each of these and ascertain that from C to E is a major third and from E to G is a minor third and it in fact is a major triad so I want you just to trust me on that. Now it just so happens that these four triads, the one, the four and the five are known as the primary triads in a major key. Those are the primary triads. Why? Well if you go through and take a look at all of the notes we have in the first one we have G, B and D. On the fourth we have a C and an E and a G which we already have and in the fifth one we have a D, an F-sharp and an A and if you'll notice then we've covered every single note of the scale. G, A, B, C, D, E, F-sharp and then we start back over at G. So contained in those three triads the one, the four and the five is every note of the major scale. Therefore we can use those three triads to harmonize any melody that sits in a major scale so they're really the important ones and we'll get back to that later. Now if we take a look at the other triads the triad built on the second step of the scale is always minor so we use a lowercase Roman numeral 2. That built on the third step of the scale is also always minor. The one built on the sixth step of the scale is always minor and that probably won't surprise you knowing that the natural minor scale grows from the sixth step of the scale and then finally the one built on the seventh step of the scale is interestingly it's a diminished chord okay. Now this works for every single major scale. If we do the same thing with every major scale one is always major, two is minor, three is minor, four is major, five is major, six is minor, seven is diminished and one is major. This becomes very important as we start analyzing music and taking a look at how music is put together within a key. Okay so now if you understand that we're going to go ahead and we're going to move on to the minor scale so let's get rid of this stuff and we're going to do something very similar. We're going to create a minor scale and I think it would be great if we use let's use an A minor scale just because the A natural minor scale grows from the C major scale and we all know that that has no sharps or flats so we'll just make things a little bit easier. So there's our A minor scale now we're going to build a triad on each step of the scale. Don't have to worry about sharps on this one so we can just build the triads real quick and this of course is the same thing again okay. Now when we're doing the minor scale here is the interesting stuff. First of all the first step of the scale is a minor triad okay. The fourth step of the scale is also a minor triad and if we just left the fifth step alone it would also be a minor triad but here's the interesting thing we always want that to be sharp so we're going to alter that note and we're going to make that a five a major five. So in order to do that we have to raise the third of that particular triad to make that work. Trust me that's an important facet of this whole thing so quite quite important okay. Now here's the next part and these are our primary triads for the minor scale a minor one a minor four and a major five okay. Now the second step of the scale ends up being a diminished second okay. The third step of the scale ends up being major okay. Now this won't surprise you if you think back to what we've done in the past where the natural minor scale starts on the sixth step of the major scale and this is the seventh step and this is the eighth step or the or the root of the major scale then you'll sort of see how this works out. Third is major the fourth is minor as we said the fifth we alter the third there to make it a major okay. After that we have a major at the sixth position okay and at the seventh position what we end up doing is you see how we raised the G here at the five we're going to do the same thing over here and we're going to raise the root of that to create a diminished seven on the seventh step so we're going to raise the root of that particular triad so those are two things that we really have to remember when we use the minor scale when we're creating the diatonic triads over the minor scale the the third of the five chord will be raised to make that major and the root of the seven chord will be raised to make it diminished and here we have the diatonic triads of the minor scale okay. Now you might wonder okay we spoke before about the one the four and the five being those important primary triads when do we see or use the other triads the ones that aren't primary and the reality is is we use them to create more colorful harmonies so basic harmonies use the primary triads and then more colorful or I ought to even do this more colorful harmonies use the other triads okay so for today we're going to do some assignments using diatonic triads and hopefully this is clear and you can begin to work with these triads and this is the beginning of really understanding how chords work within a key.