by Jeff Scheetz, TrueFire’s Director of Education

In Spark #1, I want to talk about inversions! We’ll take a look at what inversions are, a simple way to figure them out, and even how to use them to spice up your chord progressions.

I like to look at inversions as a way to take something simple, and make it sound more complex with minimum new knowledge. No matter what style of music you play, having at least a basic understanding of how inversions work will help propel you forward.

An inversion is just the re-ordering of the notes of a chord. We take the same notes but play them in a different order and the chord sounds different. This is why we can take a simple chord progression, but dress it up a little just by using different inversions of the chords. So it can “sound” more complex and interesting without really changing much. Inversions = big payoff for little changes.

So dig into this episode and make sure you are on top of your inversion game!

Inversions on the 6th, 5th, and 4th Strings

spark-1-inversions

Free Guitar Lessons on Inversions


C Major Chord Inversions
from Frank Vignola’s
Inversion Excursion

Triple C Major Play
from Brad Carlton’s
Chord Studies: Inversions

Chord Inversions
from Jason Loughlin’s
Focus On: Travis Picking

About Spark

Every masterpiece of art, music and literature blossomed from an initial spark of creativity or inspiration. We hope to likewise get your creative juices flowing with TrueFire’s Spark vlogs. We’ll deliver educational, editorial and inspirational insight to you on a regular basis in hopes that we can help you ‘spark’ your next masterpiece.