Chord inversions are about changing the order of the notes in a chord. This can be easily seen on the piano's keyboard. In a basic triad, which includes the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes, you start with the root position. An inversion shifts which note is the lowest, or the bass note.

Root Position

First you can see the root position is the most standard way of playing a chord it's a simple 1-3-5 triad.

First Inversion

If you want to invert this triad, you take the root and put it on top of the triad, so now you've got a 3-5-1 voicing, with the root as your highest note. You have a triad that's inverted because the root is no longer the lowest note of your chord.

We would notate it as C/E, and I'm sure you've seen this in some charts. C/E is inverted over its third and is called the first inversion of this triad.

Second Inversion

To get the second inversion, we start with our first inversion (3-5-root) and then take the third and pop it on top. Notice that the root is in the middle of the voicing; it's no longer on the bottom, it's, and the third is on top of your triad. That's the second inversion. And the same thing if we started with a C, we'd have G-C-E, and we would notate it as C/G.

Root, 1st and 2nd on the guitar

In each of the CAGED shapes you can pick out inversions. We'll cover those in the next few lessons. Here's how that looks in the E CAGED shape in the key of C.

Root Position

1st Inversion

2nd Inversion

Play these on the guitar and listen to how different they sound. An inversion has almost an unresolved sound; it sounds kind of like a weirder variation of the actual triad. They sound tense because if you change the bass, you're essentially altering all the intervals that the notes make with the new bass note.

Inversions in practice

Let's discuss inversion played versus inversion heard. if you're playing in a band, you're not the only one playing. A listener's ear will be receiving the whole band; i.e what the bass player and keyboardist is playing.

In this case, you have many notes happening at the same time, and what's going to determine whether or not you're really playing an inversion is whether or not you, as the guitarist, play an inversion, but what the bass player decides to play on the bass. For example say I play an inversion of a C major (3-5-1), if the bass player or another instrument is playing a lower C (the root), the total sum of me playing this inversion and someone else playing an actual low C is no longer an inversion.