Yes, of chords!

Day 5 – Inversions and Voice Leading

You’ve made it to the last day of the challenge! May it be one of many weeks of happy learning, experimenting and creating!!!

Today we’ll look at two fundamental concepts to take your harmony chops to the next level.

Don’t forget the video lesson below, which tries to put sounds to letters and formulas (and show you that you don’t need to tell theory from practice in order to put on a telling show).

Anyway.

Must go on.

1. Chord inversions

We build a chord on its root, but once we have the notes that make it up, we can play them in any order we like and that is known as inversions.

If we don’t skip chord tones, we can play the C major triad as C E G, E G C and G C E.

These are the three basic inversions of a triad.

In root position, the root is the lowest note. In 1st inversion the 3rd of the chord is the lowest note. And in 2nd inversion the 5th of the chord is the lowest note.

You will sometimes the inversions written as a chord over a bass note: C/E for the 1st inversion and C/G for the 2nd.

Notice that even though we are using the same notes, each inversion has its own particular sound and character.

The 1st and 2nd inversion contain a perfect fourth interval (as a rule of thumb for triads, the root of a chord is at the top of that perfect fourth).

The 1st inversion has a minor sixth interval between its lowest and highest note, while the 2nd inversion has a major sixth.

Besides being useful because they allow us not to jump all over the keyboard (or fretboard) playing every chord in root position, inversions are great for exploring the other fundamental concept in today’s lesson:

2. Voice leading

We normally think about chords vertically — as groups of notes played (and sounding) together.

But as soon as you have more than one chord, you also have horizontal movement between the single notes, or voices, in each of those chords.

That’s the origin of music, isn’t it? A group of people singing together. A choir.

Each voice has its own range and the lowest voice usually provides a firm foundation while the highest engages in frequent flights of fancy.

And this is where the notion of voice leading comes in.

Just as it can be preferable to play in one position on the guitar (or piano), it can be preferable to have minimal movement in a voice between chords, which means staying on the same note or moving by half-steps as much as possible.

Of course, that doesn’t always make sense for the outer voices (the bass and the melody), but it can easily sweep you of your feet when done right.

A good example is the movement of the 3rd and 7th degrees in the classic ii7 V7 Imaj7 progression. If we take it in C major, we have:

Dmin7	G7	Cmaj7
C (7th degree) moves 1/2 step down to	B (3rd degree) stays on as	B (7th degree)
F (3rd degree) stays on as	F (7th degree) moves 1/2 step down to	E (3rd degree)
D (root) up a fourth/down a fifth	G (root) down a fifth/up a fourth	C (root)

These are not inversions playable with one hand on the piano, but they show you a realistic picture of the distribution of the chord tones between the voices (in a choir for example).

More importantly, you can see how inverting the chords (switching the 3rd and 7th in G7) allows for perfect voice leading.

I mentioned in passing on Day 1 that roots like to move in fifths.

The table above shows you also that 3rds and 7ths like to move by half-steps.

These two rules of thumb are what Leonard Bernstein refers to as diatonicism (the notion of having a key center or tonic and the movement of all other chords to it, most notably the dominant) and chromaticism (sliding up or down the chromatic scale with little regard for tonality).

3. Line clichés

In practice, inversions and voice leading are useful tools if you’re looking for the perfect melody or bass line.

In addition to moving by fifths, bass lines, like melodies, like to move by half steps.

That movement in a voice is called a line cliché.

You have it everywhere from the James Bond theme (5 #5 6 5#) to Something (1 maj7 7 6 in the top voice) to Stairway to heaven (1 maj7 7 6 #5 5 in the bottom voice).

Of course, those numbers refer to the starting chord, but often, as early as the second note, the chord has changed and so has the degree.

And that’s exactly the point!

The knowledge of chords you have acquired (or brushed up) this week will allow you to seek new ways to harmonize simple chromatic melodies or devise ominously ascending or descending bass lines.

The next 5-day challenge will be about melodies, but feel free to suggest anything else you’d like to learn / work on by email.

4. Homework

Before we go, let’s not forget what we came here to do.

We came here to wreak havoc, make mischief and bust the rust!

Write a new song (fragment) by a using a line cliché, considering voice leading and/or trying out inversions.

Share your ideas (with or without sound) in the comments below.

Don’t be a stranger!

And here’s today’s video illustration:

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