I was watching a YouTube video by a jazz guitarist, and something he demonstrated made me think of this, and I am finding it to be a very effective right-hand exercise.

First step was to familiarize myself with the positions of all the major, minor and diminished triads for a given root. As a fretted instrument player, I don't care what the root note is. The important thing was getting the patterns memorized. By playing these as both arpeggios and as "block" chords, I quickly learned to recognize (and play) each triad in root position, and the 1st and 2nd inversions. By playing the notes of the triad as far as possible across the fretboard, I also saw how the notes for a given key in one octave "connect" to the next octave.

Second step is to play the extended arpeggio (AND the various inversions as block chords) for every diatonic chord for a major key, starting with C major – C, Dm, Em, F, G etc. This is helping me to see the geometric relationship not of just the notes in the triads, but between the position of the root note of the diatonic chords as well.

Third step is to repeat this exercise but for a MINOR key, such as Cm, getting the major, minor and diminished chords in the right place in the progression.

Final step is to repeat these exercises for other keys. If I do an Emaj scale, and I end up moving up the diatonic chords and end up on F# I know I've screwed up somewhere. I keep repeating the exercise until I can do this exercise for any key, both major and minor, and keep all the triads correct both with regard to their root notes and their quality (maj/min/dim).

Here is a diagram that helps visualize this:

Ah! Just came back to mention that there should really be a bb7 three frets up from that first-string root. You can often voice any three of the notes of a full diminished chord so it’s good to know where that “extra” note is. I’ll try to update that diagram.

Hey Steve.

I’ve been practicing something not too dissimilar to this lately. Basically I’m rocking out C major! , but playing triads from the third to get 7 chords in the right hand.
I figured it’s one way of getting used to more of the touchboard.

I play simple roots in the left hand, then in the right hand, I walk up the scale to the third and play the triad from there. I’m tired of not knowing where the notes are, so I say and play the notes, even trying solfege, because I actually got good at that during my Uni course. Not so much anymore… #_#

Whatever works, really.

Thanks for the suggestions and inspiration bruv.

Glad you like it. I’m finding it’s very helpful in recognizing and producing inversions – I’m much more able to see where the parts of the triad are. For a while I knew a certain fingering was a particular chord, but wasn’t always aware of which note was the root. This exercise is fixing that.

It also helps to see the chord tones for each scale when trying to improvise.

Something that I want to add to this exercise is the b7th to help identify 3rds and 7ths. I don't know to what extent "rootless voicings" are useful on the Stick, but being able to do the root-and-or-fifth in the left hand and the 3rd and 7th on the right seems like it would open up some additional harmonic possibilities.