So you’ve nailed all the arps in your A Minor position and you drop two frets down. You’re in a well-worn pentatonic box, but you’re also in G Mixolydian, which has the nice feature of connecting the two tried and true pentatonics. Having the underlying arpeggios at hand makes navigating across the fretboard more comfortable, and it allows you to explore all of the upper structure sounds (Cmaj7 over Am [3,5,7,9] for instance) that let you colorfully solo without even touching the root.
Here’s the second set of Major Key triads (in B this time) starting off the second inversion of the I chord (second string root). These have a nice flow and the I and IV shapes here should probably be old hat even if just as part of familiar bar chords.
This is the first of an exploration into mapping out all triads in a key in close proximity. There’s no shortage of locations to work from, but this is the starting point I grab most frequently. Also included are characteristic notes for the associated modes to help add color highlighting where you are in the key. All labels are relative to the key center.
On to the top three strings. I’ve personally never spent enough time on the shapes on these strings, so this is a useful learning exercise, and hopefully sharing these proves helpful more broadly. I’ve certainly never noticed that barring the top three strings gives you a major sixth or that you have a useful, easy sus2 in most pentatonic boxes.
The most frequent triad I grab is still this one. Adding extensions, suspending the third, or even dropping the root in favor of the maj. 7 all make this shape a lot more interesting than the basic 1/3/5.
Pedal On 