Hi there.
We've already considered the most
important chords, but
so far we've used them only in root
position.
As you heard then, we use a single note
name to identify chords, such as a triad
of C-major.
Here we are.
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And now's the time to consider their
inversions.
If you take a triad of C-major, obviously
it has three possible positions.
What we call root position.
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First inversion.
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And second inversion.
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So we're using the same three notes, but
we're stacking them up differently.
We're switching around the order of the,
the same notes.
And the, these chords have a slightly
different feel to them.
The root position feels firm and definite.
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The first inversion perhaps
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less so and needs to move on.
And the second inversion
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demands to move on somewhere else.
We'll be considering second inversions in
more detail later.
But for the meantime, let's consider a few
more chords and their inversions.
Let's take A-minor, because of course this
applies to minor triads as well as major.
A minor, root position.
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A minor, first inversion.
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And A-minor, second inversion.
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Let's take G-major root first and second.
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And finally C-minor root.
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First
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and second.
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You've also heard about some chords which
have four notes one
of the main ones being the dominant
seventh, which has four notes.
And obviously a chord with four notes will
have three inversions, as well as the root
position.
So let's consider a dominant seventh in
the key of C-major.
Here's C-major.
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And it's dominant seventh will sound like
this in root position.
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And then in first inversion.
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Second inversion.
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But also third inversion.
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Three inversions.
And here is another one, key of E-flat.
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Dominant seventh in root.
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In first inversion.
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In second inversion.
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And in third inversion.
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Variety in music can be obtained by using
the same
chord in its various inversions, because
each has its own feel.
For example, the finality of a root
position means that you
nearly always find a root position at the
end of a piece.
And you feel the music has come to rest.
Let's have an example.
If you take simple song like Twinkle,
Twinkle Little Star and
end it on a first inversion, it wouldn't
sound quite right.
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It's the correct chord, but it's the wrong
inversion.
If we ended the piece on the
second inversion, it would sound even more
peculiar.
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And we certainly feel we had not arrived
home.
If however you play it the correct way
with
root position at the end, it sounds like
this.
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With a feeling of finality.
So it's important to get the right
inversion, not just at the end of
a piece as we've heard there, but
throughout the music, throughout any piece
of music.
So that we call the progression of the
harmony sounds pleasing and sounds smooth.
There are many progressions we could
consider, but one
very common one that you find again
towards the end
of a piece, or the end of a section of a
piece, is what we call Ic V I.
Let's stick to F-major at the moment.
Ic is the second inversion of the tonic.
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Followed by the dominant
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Followed by root position of the tonic.
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So that's Ic V I in F.
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Now here the second inversion really wants
to move on.
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And this helps the harmony to progress
strongly towards the final chord of the
piece.
Second inversion is a chord which has to
be used very carefully.
There are only really two main situations
when you find
it, one being the cadences just described,
and the other
is what we call a passing second
inversion, where three
chords move very smoothly with the base in
conjunct motion.
So the baseline was going to move by step,
like this.
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So the middle of these three chords is a
passing second inversion.
I'll play it again.
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So the chord is, as it were, protected by
the ones on either side.
So that is a correct way to use the second
inversion,
and the other one, to repeat, is the Ic V
I cadence.
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