Color-coded triads
For more experienced players, the ability to play a given interval may really help with triads. In fact, some musicians may be able to play an entire triad with muscle memory on a given degree by simply recognizing the triad. Let’s look at some examples. First shown below in Traditional Notation are all twelve Major triads in the key of C Major.
There are a lot of accidentals in the figure because it is in the key of C Major. If any of the triads were included in a score with a key signature that contains all three notes, then there would be no need for the accidentals. But ignoring that, one can still see that the spatial relationships of a Major triad’s noteheads (i.e., their “looks”) have differences across the scale. Sometimes the three noteheads are stacked up in a straight line and other times not. Sometimes there are vertical spaces between adjacent notes, sometimes not. There is no consistent Major triad “look” with Traditional Notation. So, reading triads has the same issues are described earlier for two-note chords, but twice over.
In the next figure, with WYSIWYP and color-coded chords, the Major triads are easily recognized by the color pattern of ascending noteheads of black-green-yellow. And for musicians experienced enough to know how to play the Major triad from any degree, this makes reading them a snap (yes, this is a play on the name of the WYSIWYP app).
Minor triads switch the interval order, and thus the colors, and have a pattern of black-yellow-green:
Here are the diminished triads followed by the augmented.
Of course, if one is just playing the three notes individually as seen then identifying the chord by name may not be so important. But for some, easy identification may be helpful in knowing a general rule for playing them on any degree instead of just memorizing each of the twelve possible degrees one at a time.
Recognizing just two interval colors of yellow and green covers the most common triads. Here is a shorthand color-coding summary of four basic triads. (Numbers are the two intervals, e.g., Majors are composed of intervals of 4 and 3 semitones.)