Inversions
Lesson 7 from: Music Theory Essentials: Chords, Scales and ModesTomas George
Inversions
Lesson 7 from: Music Theory Essentials: Chords, Scales and ModesTomas George
Lesson Info
7. Inversions
Lessons
Scales Introduction
03:08 2Working out a Major Scale
06:45 3Working out a Major Key from a Melody
05:51 4Major Keys and Scales
01:54 5Major Scale on a Score
02:56 6Triads
03:37 7Inversions
03:21 8Working out the Chords in a Major Scale
09:27Different Ways to Write out Chords
04:11 10Working out Major and Minor Triads
07:01 11Diminished and Augmented Triads
05:22 127th Chords
12:16 13Extended Chords
06:34 14Suspended Chords
06:02 15The Circle of 5ths
12:48 16How to Change Key
14:54 17Natural Minor Scale
11:21 18Chords in the Minor Scale
05:59 19Harmonic Minor Scale
07:15 20Melodic Minor Scale
11:12 21Modes
03:54 22Ionian Mode
00:47 23Dorian Mode
03:14 24Phrygian Mode
03:14 25Lydian Mode
01:21 26Mixolydian Mode
02:11 27Aeolian Mode
01:03 28Locrian Mode
03:56 29Section introduction
00:17 30Song Analysis 1 - Capsize
15:25 31Song Analysis 2 - Floating
18:07Lesson Info
Inversions
Hi. In this lecture, we're going to be looking at inversions. So in the previous lecture, we wrote out the chords from a major scale. And what I've done now is I've just deleted some of those cords and I've rearranged this. So we have the second one which is this D or D minor. We look at majors and minors and diminished later on. So don't worry about this right now. I just want to show you inversions. Then we have this sixth one which is a or a minor. Then the first one which is c, then the third one, which is this E or E minor. OK. So let's play this back. Sounds fine, but it sounds quite jumpy. If you'll notice it doesn't sound very smooth in a pop music song, you probably wouldn't have it sounding like this. So let's actually just arrange some of this a bit more. So inverting your chords basically means just changing the octaves of some of the notes. This can be useful to make the music sound a bit smoother. So we have this one here, this E so if you bring this E down octave to here...
, you can hear it already. It sounds a bit smoother. We could even bring this sea down octave if we chose or we could even put that back and change this one here. This cop an octave. So that sounds a lot smoother to me. I could even rearrange this D up here, up to this d here. And now when we look at this, the notes are a lot closer together so we can get this a lot smoother. It also depends on what the lead melody is actually doing. Sometimes it can be nice to have the top notes of the chord follow the melody. So if the melody's ascending or going up towards the end, we can always put this e up here as well. So we do have different names for this like root position, which is just the chords written out as they were before. So just the root, the third, the fifth, then we have first inversion and then we have second inversions. So these are just names to describe the different inversions. So in the first inversion, in the key of C, the base would be the E the third of the triad. And so the fifth and the root would be above it and then second inversion. So in the key of C, this is where the G, the fifth of the triad would be at the bottom on the root and then you have the root and the third above it, these are just different names for inversions. We also have third inversions, but this is when we have bigger chords like seventh chords, for example. So yeah, that's inversions. I just wanted to show you quickly what inversions are and why people might use them. You can also do this in the piano row editor. A lot of the times just about making the chords sound a bit smoother. And the easy way to do this is to just rearrange some of the octaves. So these notes are closer together really. So it just sounds more smooth and less jumpy than just having the root position or just having the regular triads. So thank you for watching this lecture and I'll see you in the next one.
Ratings and Reviews
Student Work
Related Classes
Songwriting