Triad Trainer

About Triad Trainer

Triad Trainer turns the triad shapes you already know into a voice-leading drill. Pick a key, a chord and one of its inversions, mute any strings you do not want to use, then press Play. The trainer starts on the shape you chose, greys out every other note, and then moves to the nearest chord from the same key after each interval — so the exercise is always a small, playable hand movement rather than a jump across the neck. Choose Progressions instead and it follows a standard chord sequence, still finding the smallest movement for each chord.

How to Use

• Key / Scale: the root and the scale whose diatonic chords are drilled — "C" + "Major" means C major. Harmonic and Melodic Minor are where the augmented triad lives: their third chord is III+ (A harmonic minor gives C–E–G♯), and both scales carry more diminished chords than natural minor. The five modes are listed under Modes; their chords are derived from the same table, so a mode simply gives the seven degrees different qualities.
• Chord: The chord you start on. It opens on the lowest shape on the top strings (G-B-E), unless that set is muted. Clicking an already-selected chord cycles through the shapes it can start from — each click moves diagonally up the neck to the next one — and the caption tells you which you are on. The shape on screen is the one Step and Play start from. In Progressions mode the sequence chooses the chords, but clicking the chord on screen still cycles its shape, and clicking another chord the progression uses jumps to that point in the sequence.
• Muting strings: the drill always uses the nearest triad on any three adjacent strings. Click a string's line, or its name, to mute it (the same gesture as Triad Explorer). Muted strings dim, and the drill stops offering shapes that need them. If a combination leaves no three adjacent strings free, the board clears and Play is disabled until you unmute one.
• Inversion: Root position (root in the bass), 1st inversion (third in the bass) or 2nd inversion (fifth in the bass). All is a picking mode rather than an inversion: clicking a chord then cycles through every inversion of it as well as every string set.
• Octaves: a voicing that occurs twice on the visible neck is highlighted in both places, labelled A and B. Play whichever is under your hand — the drill measures its next move from the nearest one.
• Play / Pause / Step: Play (▶) starts the drill, and every press begins a fresh exercise from the chord you picked, so the same drill never repeats and you never resume on the chord you happened to stop at. While it runs, the same button becomes Stop (■). Pause (❚❚) freezes the run where it is — in a progression that means the sequence holds on the current chord — and pressing it again carries straight on from the same beat. Step advances one chord without starting the clock.
• Changes every / Tap: the select sets how long a chord is held — every beat, every 2 beats, every bar, every 2 bars, every 4 bars. Tap sets the tempo by tapping; the button shows the value it just set, and the metronome panel shows the tempo permanently.
• Mode — Random All: a voice-leading walk. At every change, the other chords are ranked by how far the hand must travel, and one of the three cheapest is chosen at random. It never repeats a chord twice in a row and never jumps straight back to the shape it just left. With Pos-lock off it also roams: each move picks a direction (up, down or either) and sometimes a neighbouring string set before taking the cheapest shape that fits, so a run covers the whole fretboard — all four string groups, both ways — instead of circling one area.
• Mode — Cycle Shapes: one chord, every shape it has. Each step moves to the next voicing of the same chord, climbing the neck and then wrapping around, so the harmony stands still while the hand finds every position. The Inversion buttons decide which shapes qualify (Root, 1st, 2nd, or All for every inversion as well), and the string mutes decide which sets, so narrowing either control narrows the cycle. Clicking a chord restarts the cycle on that chord.
• Mode — a named progression: pick one from the list (the names are grouped under Progressions, and change with the key — harmonic and natural minor keep separate sets, and the modes read the major one). A named progression is fixed: every Play replays it from its first chord, so you can compare takes. The chords it uses stay selectable: click one to enter the sequence there, and the caption tells you the position. The voicings stay local to each other, which is the point of practising in a harmonic context.
• Pos-lock: when on, only the octave(s) inside a window around your starting position are shown and used — the starting shape's fret span, widened two frets either side, and the drill takes the smallest moves within it. Clicking a chord then cycles through every octave as well as every string set, because each octave gets its own window. Chords with no octave inside that window are skipped, and the number of chords still reachable is shown under the detail panel. Off by default, which frees the drill to use every octave and every adjacent triple your mutes leave free — the Random All walk then roams the whole neck.
• Key tones (☰ menu): the grey note layer. Off (default) shows only the chord. Near shapes shows the key's notes within two frets of the shapes being drilled — the chord tones you could move to next. Whole neck maps the entire key across all strings and frets.
• Click (♪): arms or disarms the metronome click. The click follows Play — it starts and stops with the drill, and arming it mid-drill joins on the next beat. The metronome panel shows the bar position and holds tempo, time signature, sound, octave and volume.
• The strip above the transport row: when a progression is playing it shows that sequence prefixed with its name, with the chord on the fretboard marked by a filled blue pill. The sequence stays put — only the pill moves. A numeral struck through has no playable octave left (Pos-lock can do that), so the drill steps over it. In the other modes the strip shows the last few chords played instead — which in Cycle Shapes is the single chord, since the harmony never changes.
• Chord buttons: the button for the chord currently on the fretboard is highlighted, so you can see the drill's harmonic position at a glance. In Random All clicking one starts a drill from that chord, and clicking it again cycles its shape; in Cycle Shapes clicking one restarts the cycle on that chord. In a progression, only the chords that progression uses stay enabled — clicking one enters the sequence at that chord (choosing the occurrence whose next chord is nearest your hand); the rest are disabled because they are not part of the sequence.

Reading the Detail Panel

• Below the fretboard, the current chord is named (C/G means a C major triad with G in the bass), together with its inversion, Roman numeral and fret span.
• Each of the three notes is listed with its interval, its full interval name, and the string and fret where it sits.
• The colours are the same ones Triad Explorer uses, so a shape learned here looks identical there.

Musical Rules

• Closed voicings only: one chord tone per string, ascending, all inside one hand position. That is why a chord plus an inversion resolves to one shape per octave.
• Chord changes only: the drill never repeats the same chord twice in a row. In Random mode it also never jumps straight back to the shape it just left; in Progressions mode the sequence decides, and no progression in the library repeats a chord back to back.
• Nearest wins: candidates are ranked by total fret travel across the three strings, so the drill favours one-finger moves over position shifts. This applies to every mode, progressions included: the sequence names the chord, the ranking picks the voicing.