STILL GOT THE PASSION FOR TRIADS?
You’ve been playing basic triads for the past
two Woodsheds, and I know what you’re
thinking: “Triads are boring, dude. Show
me the secret, hip stuff!” Don’t slack off
now—you’ve only begun to uncover some
of the elegance and usefulness of triads. You
must completely dominate the building
blocks of music in order to up your skills.
Example 1 shows the F Mixolydian
scale. The chord symbol associated with
this scale sound is sometimes written
F7sus, F7sus11, F7sus4, Cm7/F, or Eb/F.
Hard to fathom, but all of those chord symbols
indicate the same sound. There are
many ways to understand F7sus on the
bass, and we’ll explore how to best describe
that sound on the bass by using triads.
First, play F Mixolydian up and down, sideways
and backwards, and see if you can
find three major triads that are contained
in the scale.
Ex 2 
Ex 3
Did you find them? The F, Bb, and Eb
major triads are all found within the F
Mixolydian scale (Ex. 2). If you play two of
the triads, F and Eb, you can easily outline
the sound of the F7sus chord. Example 3
shows the root, 3rd, and 5th of the F7sus
(the notes of the F major triad), followed
by the b7, 9, and 11 (the notes of the Eb
major triad). Play the notes of the two triads
in various combinations for a few minutes
and listen to the sound of F7sus; use
the eighth-note line in Ex. 4 as a starting
point. Note that the combination of two triads
forms a six-note melodic pattern—the
same notes found in the F Mixolydian scale,
without the note D. When thinking of a
scale, the tendency is to play diatonically,
or up and down step-wise. By combining
two triads, you automatically play intervallically
with wide melodic jumps.
Ex 4 
Ex 5
The pianist McCoy Tyner recorded his
album The Real McCoy [Blue Note, 1967]
several years after he left the famous John
Coltrane Quartet. Tyner pioneered a style
of playing that used 4th intervals, pentatonic
scales, and combinations of triads in
many of his lines and melodies. Tyner had
a slick way of combining triads to outline
complex chords. On the track “Passion
Dance,” he created his melody based on
the combination of the F and Eb triads. In
Ex. 5, he answers the main theme of the
song, outlining the F triad from top to bottom,
then playing the notes Bb and Eb on
beat four of bar 1. In the second bar, he
ends the phrase on another note in the Eb
major triad, the high G. By using notes from the F and Eb major triads, the line suggests
the sound of the F7sus.
To understand McCoy’s melody, let’s
also take a look at Ron Carter’s bass line.
Carter plays a “pedal” bass line under the
harmony (Ex. 6). A pedal is a repeated series
of the same note, sometimes played in
octaves. The repeated bass line on the F
pedal gives the soloists sonic space to create
intricate lines on top.
Ex 7
The ability to combine and alternate
between inversions of triads will help you
expand your bass lines and solos. Example
7 shows the F major triad alternating
with the Eb major triad. Notice that the
line starts with the root-position F triad,
and moves to the 1st inversion Eb triad in
bar 2 (G, Bb, Eb). In bar 3, the F triad is played in the 1st inversion (A, C, F). In
bar 4, the Eb triad is in the 2nd inversion
(Bb, Eb, G). The triads alternate, and the
inversions also alternate between root
position, 1st inversion, and 2nd inversion,
all the way up and down the neck.
Example 8 starts on the low F, and
then jumps to the 2nd inversion of the Eb
triad. In bars 2 and 3, notice that the line
alternates using only two notes from the
Eb triad with two notes from the F triad.
This variation still outlines the sound of
the alternating triads by using only two
notes from each triad in succession.
Ex 9 
Ex 10
In a
similar style, Ex. 9 alternates between two
notes of the F triad and two notes of the
Eb triad. Example 10 begins on a high F
and alternates between inversions of the
F triad and Eb triad down the neck.
The
line in Ex. 11 is rhythmically broken, but
still uses alternating triads.
See if you can find other combinations
of triads that can describe complicated
chords containing 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, and
13ths. Look at the following chords and
see if you can find combinations of two
triads that you could play over them: Cm7,
Cmaj7# 11, C7# 9# 11, C7b9b5. Next time,
we will dig deeper into triad pairs. Until
then, keep the passion.