Triads, Chords and Scales

If you have worked through the tutorial in the previous chapter you should now be an expert user of PET’s intervals option. The Triads, Chords, and Scales options are all very similar to the intervals option so you should find that you are able to use them straight away. This chapter details the minor differences between these four options.

Triads

In a similar manner to the intervals option the left hand side of the screen determines what is to be included in the test whilst the right hand side determines the manner in which the test is conducted.

Apart from the fact that the program now produces inversions of triads rather than intervals, the main difference now lies within the performance options section which gives you the option to have the triad performed as either a Chord or an Arpeggio.

Chords

The options specific to chords are:

Performance – Chord or Arpeggio. This works in a similar manner to the same option in the triads section

Voicing – Simple or Pianistic. Simple voicings are formed by stacking the notes of the chord on top of each other – Root, 3rd, 5th 7th etc. Pianistic voicings are formed in a manner similar to those that a pianist may use. PET has a knowledge base of over 150 pianistic voicings.

The following example shows both a simple and pianistic voicing of a Cmaj7 chord:

Scales

The option specific to scales is:

Direction – Up and Down, Up only, Down only. This describes whether the scale is played ascending, descending or ascending followed by descending. Note that the Melodic Minor scale option is only available if Up and Down is selected. This is because the melodic minor scale uses different notes going down from those going up. Listening to one direction only would make it impossible to differentiate it from the Jazz Melodic Minor scale going up and the Natural Minor scale going down.