Chord inversions example - My Funny Valentine

Understanding Inversions in Chord Progression

Perhaps the single most important piece of information you can take away from just this brief look at inversions is that the lowest note you play or hear may not, in fact, be the root of the chord.

Next Lesson Overview

That's why in the next lesson, we're going to talk about chord progression and understand a little more about how it works.

Illustrating Inversions

To illustrate this point further, besides the B section of Summer Song, which you can see written out, I've thought of a couple of other examples where the commonly applied descending line underneath implies inversions.

1. My Funny Valentine
   • This song has received scant attention to minor, something that we'll pick up in the next lesson.
   • It's a familiar ballad.
   • Usually, you hear it with a descending bass line.
   • This means that even though it can be over a pedal C the whole time (since we're in C minor in passing), you can make some nice voicings that don't disturb the overall C minor quality.
   • However, that's really an inversion of a G triad: E flat, A minor, half diminished.
   • And then to the subdominant.
   • Finally, you're at a root position chord, and so on.

Movement Within Chords

You can see how this works: you can have chord changes within chords that come just from using the lowest note to build another chord, which might be an inversion that adds more richness to the progression.

1. An Example in Major
   • An example in major would be going from C minor to E flat major, like the song Someone in Love.
   • "So what?" you may ask, this could imply that the lowest note is not the root of the chord (3, 6).

Conclusion

So, even though the important aspect is the root progression, inversions give you a way to build up movement even within that. We'll talk about that a lot more in the context of chord progression, but I just thought I might stick that in before discussing voicings that omit the root altogether.