The reading courseLesson 9 of 13 · Level 5
Triads and 6/8
Read three-note chords stacked in 3rds, broken or together, and music that counts in 6/8.
What's new on the page
A triad stacked line, line, line, and a bar of 6/8 in two beats of three.
A triad is three notes stacked in 3rds: C, E and G. On the page its heads sit all on lines or all in spaces, one above the other like a snowman. Read the lowest note, which names it, and the shape tells the hand the rest: fingers 1, 3 and 5.
Played one note after another, the same three notes are a broken chord; run on up the keyboard, an arpeggio. Read them as the chord they spell. Music now often gives each hand its own rhythm at once, a moving tune over held or broken chords: count the faster hand and let the other fit in.
In 6/8 there are six eighth notes in a bar, felt as two beats of three: 1 2 3 4 5 6, a lilting, rocking time. Each beat is a dotted quarter note, so a dotted quarter takes a whole beat here.
Met on the page you play at the end, not on a card: hands in different rhythms.
The guides that go further: How to read time signatures and How to read chords: triads, inversions and sevenths.
Pieces this lesson opens
Pieces in the library that read as ready once you know everything up to this lesson, and didn't before it.
- Album Leaf, Op. 47 No. 2Edvard Grieglevel 5
- Spinning Song, Op. 67 No. 4Felix Mendelssohnlevel 5
- Sonata in E minor, Hob. XVI:34: IJoseph Haydnlevel 5