Spread Triads

Spread triads are a fantastic way to play chords that cut through the mix. They are more open, less muddy, and have more character than cowboy and barre chords, and they're well worth your time to learn and use. This 8-page PDF lesson contains everything you need to get started.

Spread triads

Most guitarists learn their first chords as compact shapes—the familiar cowboy and barre chords—and even though some of those chords are triads containing only three distinct notes, many of the common voicings use five or even all six strings. This means that some notes are doubled (or even tripled), either in unison or an octave apart, and notes are often clustered together closely in pitch. This makes these voicings sound thick, but it can also make them muddy, especially when you add gain or modulation.

But when you widen the spacing between the notes in a triad, keeping the same ingredients but rearranging them (i.e., spreading them out), you unlock a new sonic palette. There’s a recipe for this called spread triads. I find them to be quite beautiful, and you’ll find them everywhere once you start listening for them.

Jimi Hendrix uses them in songs like “Little Wing” and “Castles Made of Sand” (you can hear spread sus2 voicings prominently at 0:23 in “Little Wing”). Eric Johnson uses them both melodically and harmonically, creating chords that sound like chimes and melodies that cascade in hypnotizing ways.

Spread triads sound clearer and more open than traditional voicings. They’re less muddy than barre chords. They can sound pianistic or even orchestral. They cut through the mix. And they’re not hard to learn.

Let’s dive in.

What are spread triads?

A spread triad takes a basic three-note chord and expands the intervallic spacing between the notes. The “classic” spread triad formula starts with a root-position triad (root-third-fifth) and moves the third up an octave, resulting in a root-fifth-tenth triad (the tenth being a third plus one octave).

You can do the same thing with inverted triads, and we’ll get there, but let’s start with a triad in root position:

If we raise the third up an octave, we get this:

Or this:

Those voicings can be challenging to finger, but if we move the 5th down a string, we get this voicing that looks like an A-shape barre chord with some missing notes:

Playing on different string sets

This voicing is easy to move up or down a string set. Here it is with the root on the D string:

(This one looks like an E-shape barre chord with missing notes.)

Altering the chord quality

We can easily modify these voicings to play other types of chords. If we lower the third one fret, we get a spread minor triad:

And if we also lower the 5th by one fret, we get a spread diminished triad:

How to practice these voicings

One great way to practice these spread voicings is to harmonize the major scale on one string. Let’s say we wanted to harmonize the C major scale on the 5th string. The scale lies between the 3rd and 15th frets like this:

Recall that if you build a triad from the 1st, 4th, or 5th scale degree, the triad will be major. You get a minor triad if you build from the 2nd, 3rd, or 6th scale degree. And you get a diminished triad when you build from the 7th scale degree.

So, to harmonize the complete scale from bottom to top with spread voicings, we would start with a major triad built from the root on the third fret:

And then a minor triad built from the second scale degree:

And we can keep going up the scale, eventually reaching a diminished triad at the 14th fret:

And finally, another major triad at the 15th fret:

We can create a slightly more challenging exercise by playing the chords in a smaller region of the fretboard. For example, we can start from the C major scale played on the lowest three strings. Here is one way to do it:

And if we harmonize the scale starting at the lower C and work upward, we get this sequence of chords:

Other inversions

Mastering the root position spread triads will give you the biggest bang for your buck, but it can be worth exploring the other inversions as well. Rather than memorizing them, I recommend learning how to build them yourself.

We can start with a first-inversion triad (root on top):

Moving the 5th (the middle voice) up an octave yields a playable voicing:

And we can shift this up a string set, minding the warp:

And this can be shifted up a second time, again minding the warp:

We could also start from a second-inversion triad (third on top):

Moving the root (middle voice) up an octave yields this:

Shifting up a string makes this voicing, which is challenging to play:

But we can move the root up to the high E string, which yields this easy-to-finger version:

Non-standard spread triads

Another approach to finding spread fingerings is to start from an arpeggio diagram. As an example, here are all of the C, E, and G notes of a C major triad up to the 12th fret:

You can create a “spread-out” triad by choosing one note of each type from any location. Here are three that jumped out to me as being very usable:

And finally, just close the loop on the introduction, this is the sus2 spread voicing that Hendrix was fond of:

Have fun with these voicings...they sound amazing, and they're easier to understand and build than they seem at first glance.