Music Video Lesson: Understanding Inversions in Music

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. Robert Estrin here with one of the most fundamental aspects of music and harmony, which is what is an inversion? Well, I had a recent video telling about what triads are, the most fundamental chord, and I have a future video coming about 7th chords and I'll get to expanded chords and all of that. But first, inversions.

It was in 1722 that Jean -Philippe Rameau first articulated that chords can be inverted. Now what does this even mean? Well, sometimes you see chords and there are different intervals in those chords, but Rameau said all chords are built upon the interval of the third and it's not a third that's inverted. Let me show you.

Let's take the simplest chord you can imagine, a C major triad, C, E, G. Well, what would happen if you put the E on the bottom? Now you don't have thirds, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, you have one, two, three, and a one, two, three, four.

Isn't that interesting? So you have a third and you have a fourth.

And is this chord built with thirds and fourths? No, it's just the inversion of this chord and you could do this again. This is sometimes referred to as first inversion, but I'm going to show you another way these chords are identified when you're doing harmonic analysis, as well as how they're identified in sheet music or lead sheets because they're different.

Well, you could do this inversion one more time, obviously, with the G on the bottom. Now you have a fourth here and a third there.

Still a C major triad in second inversion.

Now if this was sheet music, it's very simple. This would be C major or it just might be C and they would assume, you'd assume it's a C major chord. This should be a C forward slash E, C over E, very simple. This should be C forward slash G, C over G. But in harmonic analysis, it's identified differently and for very good reason. So you understand the function of the chords. So this is just a C major triad.

This is called by the intervals, the outer interval is one, two, three, four, five, six, a six and the bottom interval is one, two, three. So that's a six, three inversion. It's sometimes shortened to simply a six, a C major six. It could be that or C major six, three.

And now, you know, the formula, again, you have one, two, three, four, five, six on the outer interval and the bottom interval, one, two, three, four. This is called a six, four.

Obviously, it can't be called a six because you already have the six or six, three, six, four. That's it for triads. Root position, six, three, six, four.

Seventh chords are a little bit more complicated because you got four notes arranged in thirds.

I'll use a G seven because the dominant seventh, that is the seventh chord built on the fifth scale degree.

Once again, in C major, one, two, three, four, five. Build a chord, chords are built in thirds, every other note of the scale.

There's your five, seven. That is a seventh chord built on the fifth scale degree. Five means dominant, dominant means five. That's why it's called a dominant seventh chord.

A major triad with a minor seventh. That's a dominant seventh chord. So you've got several positions because you've got four notes. You've got root position, first inversion, second inversion, third inversion. And once again, if this was in a reed sheet, notation, this should be G seven. They wouldn't say dominant seven. They would assume, you would assume if it says G seven, they're talking about a dominant seven. No matter what seven, if it doesn't say something other than G seven or C seven or D seven, you must assume it's dominant because it is the most popular of all seventh chords.

So if it was this inversion, first inversion to be G seven over B, G seven slash B, G seven slash D, G seven slash F. That's easier for me to say. And now for the harmonic analysis type of notation, this is just simply G seven, dominant seventh, and it is in root position. Now the outer interval is a sixth, one, two, three, four, five, six.

And the next interval down is one, two, three, four, five. There is a third on the bottom, one, two, three, but this is just regarded as a six, five inversion.

You don't have to mention the three, all right? So six, five, stay with me. We're almost done here. The next one is your second inversion. You also have one, two, three, four, five, six. So since you already had six, five, you don't even have to mention that anymore. Now you have a one, two, three, four, and a one, two, three.

So the second inversion is referred to as a four, three. Now here's how easy it is to remember.

Six, five, four, three. Six, five, four, three.

That's easy to remember, isn't it? Because it's just descending numbers. Six, five, three, you don't have to say the three.

Six, four, three, you don't have to say the six.

So first inversion is six, five. Second inversion, four, three. One more to go, and we're done with seventh chord inversions.

The third inversion, one, two, three, four, five, six. Once again, a six. You don't have to say the six once again. One, two, three, four, one, two.

So this is called a four, two inversion. So to recap, root position, six, five, four, three, four, two. And that is all there is to the inversions of seventh chords. Incidentally, all seventh chords can be inverted, and they're all named the same way. So if you had a major seventh chord, that is a major triad with a major seventh, it's still six, five, four, three, four, two. A diminished seventh chord, six, five, four, three, four, two. Which is funny in that case, because all the intervals are three half steps apart with diminished seventh chords. I have a video on diminished seventh chords because they're so cool that way. In that, they all sound the same when they're inverted because it all remains with three half steps. But you can figure out the root of the chord by seeing the intervals, the letter names. You arrange the notes in thirds. All lines are all spaces, always skipping a letter. That gives you a hint how the chord is resolved.

And that's a lesson for another video. I may have a video on it. If I do, it'll be in the description along with the other diminished seventh chord video for you. I hope you enjoy these music theory primers. If you do, let us know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com. Or your online piano store. I want to make sure these videos are useful to you. Again, I'm Robert Estrin. Thanks so much for joining me.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/understanding-inversions-in-music/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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