What is a triad pair?

Two triads with no note in common, alternated over one chord. Six pitch classes in total, three under the hand at a time. The appeal is economy: you already know every major and minor triad, so a pair costs no new shapes, and the six notes with a gap in them do not sound like a scale the way seven notes in a row do.

Which triad pair works over a maj7 chord?

Over Cmaj7 the standard answer is Em and D. Em is the chord from its third upwards — 3, 5 and 7 — and D major sits above it as the 9th, the #11th and the 13th. The lower triad states the harmony and the upper one colours it, and between them not one note is outside what the chord accepts.

Which triad pair works over an altered dominant?

Over G7alt, C# and Eb major: between them they spell the #11, the b7, the b9, the b13, the root and the #9 — every alteration the symbol asks for — using two ordinary major triads. Neither one is a shape you have to learn, which is the whole point of the device.

Why do triad pairs sound different from scales?

A seven-note scale played in order has a semitone step in it and no gaps, so the ear hears a run. A triad pair is six notes with a hole where the seventh would be, arranged in thirds rather than steps, so the line leaps where a scale would walk. That is why the same harmony sounds angular played as a pair and smooth played as a scale.

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Triad Pairs

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Part of the PDF Pass

Jazz Guitar Triad Pair Finder

Two triads with no note in common, over one chord. The finder gives you every pair that fits, the tensions each one puts on top of the harmony, and — because that is the part nobody writes down — what the combination actually sounds like.

Any jazz chord symbol: Cmaj7, Dm9, G13, F#m7b5, Bb7alt, Ebm6, A7#11. You get every pair of triads that share no note and fit over it.

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What the finder returns, on one chord

Here are the top two pairs for Cmaj7, rendered exactly as the tool renders them — the notes, what each triad is against the chord, what the combination adds, and how it sounds. This much is open to everybody. Any other chord needs the pass.

Start here

Em+D

a whole step apart

The six notes: E G B·D F# A
Against the chord: 3 5 7·9 #11 13
Adds: 9 #11 13

What it adds. Em holds the chord — 3 5 7 — and D sits on top of it as 9 #11 13. That second triad is the whole point: three notes, none of them in the chord, and between them the 9th, the #11th and the 13th arrive at once. It is the sound people mean by "lydian" without anybody having to play a scale.

How it sounds. Open and bright. The upper triad puts 9 #11 13 above the chord, and those are the tensions that lift rather than pull — nothing here wants to resolve anywhere. It is the sound of a chord being enjoyed rather than left.

Common

G+Am

a whole step apart

The six notes: G B D·A C E
Against the chord: 5 7 9·13 1 3
Adds: 9 13

What it adds. Built from the fifth: G gives you 5 7 9 and Am gives you 13 1 3. Between them they cover the chord and add 9 13, and neither triad contains the root — which is why it floats without ever losing the chord.

How it sounds. Open and bright. The upper triad puts 9 13 above the chord, and those are the tensions that lift rather than pull — nothing here wants to resolve anywhere. It is the sound of a chord being enjoyed rather than left.

Notice what the second column is doing. The answer is never "play D and Em" — that is a pair of shapes, not a piece of information. The answer is 3 5 7 under 9 #11 13: the lower triad states the chord and the upper one is three tensions arriving together, in a shape you learned in your first month of playing.

Triad pairs through a progression

One pair per chord is the easy half. The half worth having is finding a triad that survives the chord change — one shape that is the 9th of the chord you are leaving and the 13th of the one you are arriving at. Keep it under your hand, let the harmony move around it, and the change plays itself.

Presets

The books behind this tool

Triad pairs are one way of building a line that sounds decided. Tension and Resolution is the whole system that device belongs to.

Start here Project 02 · Jazz guitar

What a triad pair is, and why it is not a scale

Two triads that share no note, alternated over one chord. Six pitch classes, three under the hand at a time. That is the entire definition, and the constraint that does the work is the sharing: two triads with a note in common are five notes with a doubling, and the whole device is the six.

Six notes out of the twelve is nearly a scale, so the question is why it does not sound like one. Two reasons. The first is the gap: a seven-note scale has no hole in it and the ear reads any run through it as a scale, while six notes leave one degree missing and the line keeps stepping over the same absence. The second is the shape: a triad moves in thirds, so a pair leaps where a scale walks. Play the same six notes in order and you have a run; play them as two triads and you have a phrase.

And it costs nothing to learn. Every major and minor triad in twelve keys is the first thing anybody puts under their fingers. A pair adds no new shape at all — it adds a reason to put two old ones next to each other.

Read them by what they add, not by their names

"D and Em over Cmaj7" is a pair of shapes and almost no information. What a player needs is the second line: Em is 3 5 7 — the chord from its third upwards — and D is 9 #11 13, three tensions arriving at once. Now the pair is not a thing to memorise, it is a thing you can reason about, and you can work out the equivalent over any other chord yourself.

That is why every result here is named twice: once as two triads, and once as six degrees against the chord you typed. The tool also splits them — which triad holds the harmony down, which one is doing the colouring — because in practice you use those two differently. The lower one is where a phrase starts and returns; the upper one is where it goes.

And by how they feel

Two pairs can add the same number of tensions and sound nothing alike, so every result carries a second sentence about what it actually does to the ear. That sentence is not a label attached to a famous pair — it is derived, every time, from four things the tool can check: which tensions are in it, whether the chord's third and seventh are both covered, what kind of triads they are, and how far apart their roots sit.

Those four facts predict the feeling surprisingly well. A #11 and a 13 over a major third lift; a b9 and a b13 pull. Two shapes a whole step apart alternate smoothly enough that the ear hears one line; a minor third or a tritone apart repeats up the neck and takes the gravity out of the sound entirely. And a pair missing the third or the seventh floats — striking over a bass line, vague on its own. Change the chord and the sentence changes, because the facts do.

How to practise them so they sound like music

The failure mode is easy to hear: the two triads arrive in strict alternation, up one and down the other, and the listener hears an exercise. Three things fix it. Break the order — start the second triad from a different note than the one you left. Break the register — take one of them an octave up so the line is not a ladder. And leave the pattern before it becomes obvious: two triads is enough material for two bars, not eight.

The other half is the changes. A pair practised on one static chord is a shape; a pair practised across a ii-V-I is a language, because the interesting question there is which triad survives the bar line. Very often one of the two works over both chords with a completely different meaning — the 9th of one and the 13th of the next — and holding that shape still while the harmony moves under it is the single most useful thing this device does.

Why this one is behind the pass

Everything else on this site is free and stays free: the voicing finder, the scale finder, the arpeggio finder, the hundred analysed standards and the harmony analyzer are open to anybody, with no account and no limit on searching. The PDF Pass buys two things — unlimited printable sheets across all the tools, and this finder. One payment, no subscription, no expiry, and the key works on up to five devices.

The worked example above is not a teaser with the answers removed — it is the real output for a real chord, with both sentences intact. If it is not worth the pass to you, it is not, and the rest of the site does not change.

Jazz Guitar Triad Pair Finder

What the finder returns, on one chord

Em+D

G+Am

Triad pairs through a progression

The books behind this tool

Tension and Resolution

Jazz Guitar Comping

Jazz Harmony

What a triad pair is, and why it is not a scale

Read them by what they add, not by their names

And by how they feel

How to practise them so they sound like music

Why this one is behind the pass

Explore more jazz harmony

Jazz guitar arpeggios

Jazz guitar scales

Jazz guitar chord voicings

100 jazz standards