Rhythm Guitar: Chord Inversions

It’s all very well and good knowing your basic open chords, and if you can extend each of the CAGED shapes up the neck to form barre chords, that’s even better…but you’re still kinda limited by those shapes. I mean, do you ever listen to rhythm players and just wonder how they’re pulling all of these sophisticated sounds out of their guitar? Well, it could be that they are using chord inversions.

Now, in order to understand what I’m going to explain next, you’ll need to have a basic concept of chord construction under your belt. If you already understand how chords are made, then this is for you. Read on!

What are Inversions

Have you ever used MS paint (or any similar image editing software)? After you open up an image with these programs you’ll have an option somewhere that says “invert colours” (or “colors” if you’re American). When you click it, it’ll turn the picture that you have into what looks like a photo negative (if your camera has film then you’ll know what I mean).

…wait…I’m going off on a random tangent here, right?

Wrong! Because when you “invert” the colours of an image you basically reverse them. That’s what a photo negative is- the reverse of the original image.

Do you see how the negative image looks the same, but also very different to the original? That’s what we’re going to do to our chords to create interest.

Inverting Chords

So, lets track back to our chord construction. In a basic chord you have the root, the third, and the fifth, right? Generally, the notes are played in that order: the root is the lowest note, the third is above it, and the fifth is the highest note. The important note here is the lowest note, and each one of our CAGED chord shapes has the root as the lowest note.

…but that’s kinda boring…

So the basic idea of inversions is that we kinda mess with the order the notes appear (from lowest to highest).

Examples

We could use any CAGED shape as an example here, but I’ve chosen the “C” shape because the order of notes in it happen to be (from lowest to highest): “root” – “third” – “fifth” – “root” – “third”.

With the root as the lowest note, it’s known as “root position”.

e --0-- B --1-- G --0-- D --2-- A --3-- E -----

If we, instead, play the third as the lowest note, we get what is called the “first inversion”.

e --0-- B --1-- G --0-- D --2-- A ----- E -----

Play this and you can probably hear a slight difference, if not try moving the shape around to different frets.

e --5-- B --6-- G --5-- D --7-- A ----- E -----

This next shape is also possible:

e --0-- B --1-- G --0-- D --2-- A --3-- E --0--

So, that’s the “first inversion”…if we play the fifth as the lowest note it’s known as (you guessed it) the “second inversion”. Here is an example of a C shape in second inversion.

e --0-- B --1-- G --0-- D ----- A ----- E -----

…or this one…

e --0-- B --1-- G --0-- D --2-- A --3-- E --3--

Using Inversions

It’s a pretty basic concept- just changing the lowest note of the chord around, but it does require a knowledge of the notes in a chord and where they are on the fretboard. Once you’ve mastered these concepts it allows you to come up with some interesting chord variations.

For example, here is a G major second inversion:

e --7-- B --8-- G --7-- D --0-- A ----- E -----

I hope this has given you some ideas!
Rob.

June 28, 2011 at 11:00 pm | Guitar Chords, Music Theory | No comments