Guitar Triad Trainer — How the App Works

Three Ways to Train

The app has three drill modes. Tapping the mode word cycles through them: NAME → FIND → FLOW → back to NAME.

NAME — recognition

The fretboard shows a shape and you identify its inversion and CAGED position. No hints, so it trains snap judgment rather than deduction.

FIND — recall

The app names a triad and you tap the exact three frets. This is recognition run backwards, which is what turns theory into muscle memory in both directions.

FLOW — hands-free

Chords auto-advance on a timer you set, so both hands stay on the guitar and you never touch the screen. This is the mode that connects the app to actual playing.

Most trainers only do the recognition half. Being able to drill recall and hands-free flow is the difference between knowing where a triad is and being able to reach for it mid-song.

Practice Modes

Single Chord

One key, one quality. The baseline — a good warm-up for every session.

Progression Lock

Cycles through a chord progression — blues, pop, jazz cadences and minor turnarounds, filtered to your current major or minor key. Each new voicing lands close to the previous one, so you train smooth voice leading rather than isolated shape recognition. The previous chord's tones stay on the board as faded ghost dots, showing exactly where each note moved.

All Triads

Quality becomes part of the answer. Major, minor and diminished are mixed together and the answer bar grows a quality row, so you name everything rather than just the inversion.

CAGED Shape

Locks to one CAGED position and asks you to find every inversion across all string sets inside it. Found shapes are marked in dark green; complete them all to unlock.

Controls Worth Knowing

• CAGED overlay — shows all five shape boxes for the current root. Use it to orient, then switch it off and test yourself.
• String-set toggles — circles on the fretboard's left edge include or exclude string sets. They must stay contiguous, three or more adjacent strings.
• Forced order — in FIND mode, forces you to pick root, then third, then fifth in sequence. One wrong pick clears the board and resets. It strips away guessing by shape.
• Interval arrows — curved arcs connecting root → third → fifth, labelled min 3 or maj 3. A major triad is a major third then a minor third; minor flips them; diminished stacks two minor thirds; augmented stacks two major thirds.
• Scoring — a wrong answer deducts one. Targets are 10, 25, 50 or 100.

A Practice Progression That Works

Focused daily practice beats long unfocused sessions. Ten to fifteen minutes of sharp reps will outrun an hour of casual noodling within weeks. This is the order that works:

1. Single Chord, NAME mode, one string set. Pick C major and enable strings 1·2·3 only. Get 25 right before moving on.
2. Expand to all string sets. Same key, all strings. Each string set has a different shape fingerprint — learn to name them.
3. CAGED Shape mode. Lock to one letter, starting with E or A since most guitarists already know those. Hunt every inversion inside that box.
4. Progression Lock. Start with I–IV–V in one key and watch how the close-position algorithm moves the voices. Then try a ii–V–I or a minor turnaround.
5. All Triads in unfamiliar keys. Pick the keys you avoid — E♭, A♭, F♯.
6. FLOW mode with the guitar in your hands. Set an 8–12 second timer, call up the pentatonic scale for the key, and find each triad hiding inside that box before the timer fires.
7. Forced order. Once FIND feels easy, turn it on. You now have to know the root, third and fifth as individual notes, which is a meaningfully harder skill.

How to Think While Drilling

• Root first. Before answering, find the root note on the board. Everything else hangs off it.
• Name the third. Major (four semitones) or minor (three)? That one note gives you quality and inversion at the same time.
• Don't count frets. Train pattern recognition, not arithmetic. If you are counting, slow down until the shapes are visual.
• Use FIND to close the loop. NAME builds recognition, FIND builds recall. Real playing needs both.

What It Costs and What It Collects

The app is free, has no ads, and requires no account. It stores your settings in your own browser and uses anonymous product analytics — details are in the privacy policy. Chart PDFs for every key are also free with no email required.