Piano Chord Inversions

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Omri and today we are going to talk about chord inversions. When we play a chord for example a Triad, a three note chord we start on the bottom and we go up a third; one, two, three and then we go up another third from there; one, two, three. All Triads are going to be of this form. Some of them are going to have sharps and flats; one, two, three. And some of them are going to play only on the white keys. So they are all going to appear to have a space of one note between each of the notes that we are playing of the chord. Now this form is not the only way to play this chord; the C Major chord so long as I’m playing the same notes I can play them anywhere I want on the piano in any order and they are still the C Major chord. For example, I can take this note the bottom C and put it over here; I can take the E and put it way up here and I can take the G and leave it where it is and it will still have the same sound quality of a C Major chord and we still refer to it as a C Major chord. Now also don’t have to play the notes in the same order. In this case I played C, then G, then E where E is normally the middle one. I can take E and make it the top one; I can make it the bottom one. So long as I am still playing the same notes I’m playing the same chord. Now when I change the base note I call it an inversion. When the base note of a C Major chord is C I call that root position because the C, the bottom note the one that sounds lowest is on the bottom. If I take the C and put it on top so now the second note of the chord is the base we call that first inversion. Now if I take that E and put it on top so now the G, the second note of the chord, or rather the third note of the chord is on the bottom, is on the base we call that second inversion. And then if we did it one last time, the C would be on the base again and we would come back to root position. So Triads only have root position or two inversions because they only have three notes. A seventh chord has four notes so it has three inversions. One, two, three and then back to root position. When I play the chords in different inversions sometimes they have a different sound quality and can function differently in the chord progression. For example, when I end a phrase or certainly when I end a whole piece or song I want to land on root position. I want to fall on the base; on number one. It makes me feel like I have finished that progression. If I end on an inversion I don’t feel like I’ve quite ended. That feels like an ending."