Chord Theory: Part 4

Welcome to the fourth part of our series on chord construction. In this lesson we will be looking at chord inversions and how you can use them in your music.

Chord Inversions

So far all of the chords we have been dealing with have been root position. This means the first note of the chord is the root note. For example we have look at a C major chord starting from the root note of C giving us the voicing

C E G

There are three types of common chord inversions and they are called first inversion, second inversion and third inversion. Chord inversions are really great for adding interest and for mixing things up. If you play any jazz music you will know that there are many times where you would not want to have the root as the bass note.

There is really nothing complicated about chord inversions. The notes of the C major chord can be played in a different order. For the first inversion we start off with the E in the bass giving us the following chord

E G C

Although it starts with an E in the bass it still contains all the notes of a C major chord and can therefore be seen as a C major chord with an E as the bass note.

First inversion E G C

Second inversion G C E

Below we can see the inversions for the C major triad

The next example shows the inversions for the C minor triad

All chords have inversions and you should experiment to see which ones sound good and which ones don't.