Hi everyone,

i'm struggling with triads in improvisation, here's the point:

there are a lot of songs based on triad strumming/picking/fingerpicking (eg. "Wish you were here" - Pink Floyd, "Best friend's girlfriend" - The Cars, "Sultans of swing" - Dire Straits and so on) and i'd like to introduce these shapes into my improvisation gigs.

Unfortunately i found it extremely hard to do it due to the following reasons:

1) The same triad note can have 3 shapes (inversions) on each string triplet and i don't know when to use one instead of another given a certain song key.

2) The same triad note can be done on high strings or on low strings and i don't know the best practices about how to combine them.

3) I don't know by heart every note on the guitar neck: for the first 3 strings i do quite well (because of E shape, A shape and D shape bar chord), while the other 3 it requires me a few seconds (sometimes a lot of seconds ;-) ) to understand what notes i'm playing.

So i tried without luck to find out here on guitartricks and on the web a sort of "meat and potato" guide that helps you visualize how to combine triads in an easy way when you're improvising, something like the "L shape" bar chords rule if you see what i mean (eg. in a C key song, if i want to do a 1-4-5 progression, i just really have to know where the E shaped C note barré is on the 6th string, after that, without thinking too much, i'll know that 4 and 5 notes are positioned just under on the 5th string).

In short terms:

actually, when i'm improvising on a jam track, i'm used to play by switching between the 5 shapes scales of the track key note using the CAGED system by following my feelings and personal tastes. In some case i play by combining the 5 shapes scales of more notes, follwing the progression of the back track.

Maybe these ways are not very professional but they just work in nearly every case.

To do this i only had to learn the 5 shapes of the scales and how to locate them on the neck and i was ready to go.

Is there something similar for the triads?

Thank you in advance