Guitar Triad Chart

How to use this guitar triad chart

1. Start in the chord view if you want one chord everywhere. Pick a root and a triad type and you get all 12 places it lives: 4 sets of three adjacent strings, 3 inversions on each.
2. Switch to the key view if you are learning a song. Pick the key and the chart hands you its 7 triads with roman numerals, already worked out as major, minor or diminished, climbing one string set in order.
3. Read the dots, not the fret numbers, first. R is the root, 3 or ♭3 is the third, 5 or ♭5 or ♯5 is the fifth. Learn that one cluster and the shape moves to any root without you looking anything up again.
4. Tap any shape to hear it. Once for the chord, or "one note at a time" to check all three strings are actually sounding — the usual problem with triads is one muted string you cannot hear under the other two.
5. Tick the ones you are working on and print them. Free, no email, left-handed if you set it that way.

Why this chart is different

Search for a triad chart and you get pictures: pinned images, uploaded PDFs, a few posters for sale at twenty dollars. Some of them are perfectly good pictures. None of them can answer a question.

• It does keys, not just chords. Every chart out there is filed by chord quality — here are the major triads, here are the minor ones. That is not how you use them. You are in a song in G and you need G, Am, Bm, C, D, Em and F♯dim, in one place, in shapes that sit near each other. That view exists here and, as far as page one of Google goes, nowhere else.
• The key view climbs instead of scattering. Pin one inversion across a key and the shapes jump all over the neck: in G on the top three strings, root position puts the tonic at fret 12 and the ii chord at fret 0. The default here walks the harmonised scale upward instead, each chord as close to the last as the neck allows.
• Every shape plays. Chord or arpeggio, on a phone too.
• It names the one to learn first. 12 diagrams is a wall. The chart rates all of them and points at one, and tells you why in plain words rather than a score.
• It is left-handed with one toggle, interval labels still the right way up. Roughly one player in ten needs this and almost nobody offers it.
• You choose what gets printed, free, no sign-up. And you can put the whole thing on your own site — of the pages ranking for this, not one offers an embed.

How it works (the fretboard math)

Nothing here is a stored picture. Give the chart a root and a triad type and it works out all 576 shapes from two numbers, which is how 48 chords and 576 positions exist without one being typed in by hand.

A triad is three notes — root, third, fifth — and the type just sets how far up the third and fifth sit:

major       R  3  5     [0, 4, 7] semitones
minor       R b3  5     [0, 3, 7]
diminished  R b3 b5     [0, 3, 6]
augmented   R  3 #5     [0, 4, 8]

A close-voiced triad stacks those three notes in rising pitch on three adjacent strings. Which note ends up lowest is the inversion, and that alone fixes the two gaps between the strings:

third = a semitones above the root, fifth = b semitones

  root position (root lowest)    gaps = [ a,      b - a  ]
  1st inversion (third lowest)   gaps = [ b - a,  12 - b ]
  2nd inversion (fifth lowest)   gaps = [ 12 - b, a      ]

open strings = E A D G B e = MIDI 40 45 50 55 59 64

  bass fret  = ( bass note - open note of the low string ) mod 12
  next pitch = previous pitch + gap
  fret       = pitch - that string's open pitch

Work C major on the top three strings and the three shapes everybody already plays fall straight out: root position at frets 5 5 3, first inversion at 9 8 8, second inversion at 0 1 0. Nobody had to look them up.

Two things fall out of the same maths that a printed chart cannot tell you. Some voicings need a note below the open pitch of the set's lowest string, so they do not exist near the nut at all — A minor in root position on strings 3·4·5 wants its C two frets under the open D — and the first place you can actually play them is an octave up. And an augmented triad splits the octave into three equal major thirds, so its three inversions have identical gaps: one grip, moved four frets at a time. The chart says so instead of drawing the same diagram three times and calling them different.

Note names are spelled the way a musician writes them, from the root's letter outward, so B diminished is B D F and never B D E♯. The root name is chosen per chord type rather than fixed per pitch: D♭ major spells D♭ F A♭, while the same pitch as a minor chord is written C♯m and spells C♯ E G♯. Four chords out of 48 still need an awkward accidental, because their roots are natural notes with no second spelling to fall back on — Eaug has a B♯ in it, Baug genuinely has an F♯♯ — which is exactly why the dots are labelled R, 3 and ♯5 rather than by letter.

Three ways players actually use this

Getting off barre chords

The usual reason to come looking for triads is that six-string chords are too much: too thick under a vocal, too slow to change, and they fight the bass player for the same frequencies. A triad is the same chord with the doubled notes thrown away. Look up C in the chord view and the second inversion on the top three strings comes in at fret 0 with a one-fret stretch — easier than the open C chord, and it sits above everything else in the band. Once three or four of those are under your fingers, our beginner guitar chord shapes start sounding heavy-handed by comparison.

Comping through a song in one key

This is what the key view is for. Set it to the song's key, pick the top string set, and you have the whole progression as three-note shapes within a few frets of each other. Playing the changes without moving your hand more than two frets is the skill, and the ladder ordering is built for exactly that practice. It pairs with the chord progression generator if you want something to play them over, and this is the register where a compressor or a clean boost earns its place — three notes high on the neck need help to cut through without being loud.

Finding the chord you can hear but cannot name

Triad shapes are also the fastest way to work out a part by ear, because there are only 4 string sets and 3 inversions to try. Listen for whether the lowest note of the shape is the chord's root or not, then check the matching inversion here. If you would rather go the other way — play a shape and be told what it is — the chord identifier does that, and the fretboard chart is how you stop needing either of them.

Frequently asked questions

What are the basic guitar triads?

Four, and this chart has all of them: major (root, major third, fifth), minor (root, minor third, fifth), diminished (minor third and a flattened fifth) and augmented (major third and a raised fifth). Major and minor are the two you will use constantly. Diminished turns up as the seventh chord of every major key and as a passing chord. Augmented is rare and mostly used to walk between two other chords, which is why so many charts leave it out.

Is a triad always 1, 3, 5?

The notes always are — a triad is three notes a third apart, stacked. The order is not. Put the third at the bottom and you have a first inversion; put the fifth at the bottom and you have a second inversion. Same chord, same three notes, different shape and a noticeably different sound, because the lowest note is what your ear anchors to. That is the whole reason this chart shows 3 shapes per string set instead of one.

What are the 12 major triads?

One on each note: C, D♭, D, E♭, E, F, F♯, G, A♭, A, B♭ and B. Each is that root plus the note four semitones up and the note seven semitones up. Switch the chart to major and step through the 12 roots — the shape never changes, it only slides. That is the single most useful thing about triads and the reason they are worth learning before you learn more chord types.

Why play triads instead of full chords?

Three reasons that all matter in a band. They stay out of the bass player's way, because every note is above the fourth string. They let two guitarists play the same progression without turning to mud, since you can take the top three strings while the other takes a lower voicing. And they move: changing chord is a two-fret slide rather than a whole new hand shape, which is how rhythm parts in soul, funk and country get their movement. The cost is that a triad has no low root, so it needs a bass under it to sound complete.

Can I get this guitar triad chart as a printable PDF?

Yes, free, no email. Tick the shapes you want and press the PDF button, or leave everything unticked and you get whatever the chart is showing — all 12 positions of one chord, or a whole key's 7 triads. Each diagram prints with its interval labels, note names and fret position, it respects the left-handed setting, and because the diagrams are drawn as vectors rather than pixels it stays crisp at any size.

Related tools

• Barre Chord Chart — the opposite end of the same problem: six strings under one finger, and which position to actually play.
• Guitar Fretboard Chart — every note on the neck, which is how you find a triad without a chart at all.
• Chord Identifier — tap a shape onto a fretboard and find out what you just played.
• Interactive Circle of Fifths — where the 7 triads of a key come from in the first place.
• Chord Progression Generator — something to play these shapes over.
• Browse all free musician's tools by Julian →

Gear that makes triads work

The suggestions beside the chart change with where on the neck the shape you are looking at sits, because an open-position triad and one at fret 12 ask for different things. Three things genuinely help. A clip-on tuner, because three notes have nowhere to hide — a six-string chord will paper over a string a few cents out and a triad will not. A smaller, stiffer pick, because making three adjacent strings sound like one chord is a picking problem before it is a fretting one; there is a spread of gauges in our guitar picks roundup and the jazz-sized ones are what most players land on for this. And, if you are working the upper-neck shapes, an instrument that lets you reach them: above the twelfth fret on a dreadnought is a wrestling match, while a cutaway electric makes it a non-issue — see the best electric guitars, or the beginner electrics if it is a first one. Lighter strings help too, since triads live on the thin strings and bend under the finger while the other three are muted: the best electric guitar strings roundup covers what to move to.

Sources & methodology

• Tuning and pitch. Standard tuning E–A–D–G–B–e, A4 = 440 Hz. A string sounds (open string + fret) mod 12; playback frequency is 440 · 2^((m−69)/12).
• Triad construction and inversions. Interval formulas and inversion nomenclature per Open Music Theory (Vanderbilt / Ohio State, CC BY-SA), chapters on triads and inversion and figured bass. Diatonic spelling cross-checked against musictheory.net.
• Shapes. All 576 are derived from the interval rule above, not transcribed. Spot-checked against the free per-key triad PDFs published at triads-guitar.com, which is the one other site that gives every inversion on every string set: agreement on all 4 sets.
• Which shape to learn first. Editorial, by Julian. It ranks the 12 positions of a chord against each other on three things — how far up the neck the shape sits, how wide the stretch is, and how muddy a close voicing gets on the thick strings, since three notes inside a major third down at the fourth, fifth and sixth strings genuinely blur. It is a judgement about what is useful, not a measurement, and another pair of hands may rank them differently.
• Verification. Every build runs a fixture suite of more than 8,000 assertions over this chart. All 576 shapes must sound exactly their three chord tones with nothing missing and nothing extra; the pitches must genuinely ascend; every fret must be re-derivable from its own string's open pitch; the lowest note must be the one the inversion names; no chord may spell an unpinned double accidental; the 48 key ladders must all cover their key and stay on the neck; and every shape must rebuild identically from the id that the share link and the PDF are keyed on. If any of that drifts, the site does not build.

Standard tuning throughout, close-voiced shapes on adjacent strings. Fret numbers are positions, not fingerings — use whichever fingers let you move cleanly to the next shape. Reviewed by Julian Reyes, MM (Berklee). About Julian · Last reviewed September 28, 2026.

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  Guitar triad chart by
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  &middot; Reviewed by Julian Reyes, MM (Berklee)
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