Guitar Fundamentals: Chord Inversions Made Easy

1. Introduction: Take a listen to this club. Now, I'm going to play the same Chords using Inversions. I'm lancelot Houston and I'm a musician and producer. I played in several bands and have a passion for teaching music through many years of teaching guitar, I stumbled across an approach to chord inversions that transform my students playing overnight. Now I want to share that method with you. The chord and its simplest sense is multiple notes played at the same time. Chord inversions are a way of rearranging those notes in order to change the feeling of the chord. In this class, we'll delve into the world of chord inversions and explore how they can elevate your plane to new heights. You'll create an original piece of music. And in the process, you'll learn how to navigate the guitar neck and expand your knowledge of Music Fundamentals. How to use inversions to efficiently move throughout a chord progression and bring a fresh perspective to your playing. Seamless melody creation and confidence in improvisation. How to create variation in your baselines. This class is designed for guitarists of all levels. Maybe you've found yourself in a route with your playing and are looking for a way to progress. Maybe you're an experienced player, but are looking for a different approach of navigating the guitar neck. Or perhaps you just want to brush up on some Music Theory. By the end, you'll have gained the knowledge and confidence to explore and utilize chord inversions near plane. So grab your guitar and lets get started. 2. Class Orientation: Today you're going to learn how to incorporate Inversions into your guitar playing. By the end, you'll have created an original piece of music and have utilized at least one chord inversion in your composition. All you'll need is a guitar to get started. Here's some things that I'll be looking for in your class, projects, compositions where Inversions add to the sonic complexity of your piece. Using inversions to improve the efficiency of your playing and supporting melodic ideas and creative bass lines using inversion Shapes, you can submit your project by recording yourself on your phone or any other recording device. Now, we're going to take a look at the basics of chord inversions and the theory behind 3. Foundation: What Are Chord Inversions?: Before we dive into playing chord inversions, let's build a foundation of understanding by covering the basics, including what chord inversions are, why they're important, and how they differ from standard root position chords. So what are Chord Inversions? A chord inversion changes the order of the notes of the chord and ordered the change the feeling of the chord. So the result is the original low no, or bottom note of your chord becomes one of the higher upper notes of the chord. In order to best understand the concept of a chord inversion, I think it's helpful to move over to a keyboard first, some basics. There are 12 different nodes, and when played an order, this is known as the chromatic scale. Here we're looking at all the notes from C2C, the losi, to this high C, this is called an octave. The notes in-between consistent. Both white and black keys. The white keys are the piano are a, B, C, D, E, F, and G. These are known as natural nodes. The black keys are notes in-between the natural notes. They're called accidentals, or you might know them as sharps or flats when unnoticed sharp the pitch moves up or to the right by one key. So the black key to the right of C becomes C sharp. When a node is flat, the pitch moves down or to the left by one. So C-sharp could also be looked at as D flat. It's also important to note that there are no accidentals between the notes E and F and B and C. Now, I want to look at the C-scale. The Z scale is important because it's generally the starting place when discussing the basics of Music Theory. Scales aren't notes that are grouped together within an octave. This is important in understanding how chords are built. We're only going to look at the most basic form of chord known as a triad. Triads take the first, third, and fifth notes of the scale, and when they're played together, we have a chord. In the case of the C chord, we have the notes C, E, and G, when played in this order, this is known as a root position chord. A root position chord is when the one of the chord is the lowest note being played. Now let's get into inversions. If we invert the chord one time, it's called a first inversion. In a first inversion, we move the sea to the top, and now the third, or the E is the bottom note. If we invert the chord again, it's called a second inversion. In this case, we have E at the top, but now the G, or the fifth is the base or the low note. I'll also note that you can invert chords that have four notes as well. But for the purposes of this class, I want to stick with triads to keep it simple. Now, I'm going to switch over to the guitar and we're gonna review some standard chord shapes that are important to know before we start using chord inversions 4. Root Position Chords: Basic Shapes: Lumen, the basic chord shapes on the guitar is a bit like learning to walk before you can run with a chord inversions. I'll be showing you how to play these chords so you can lay the foundation for your class project. First, we'll need to go over some basic navigation of the guitar neck. It's important to know the names of the guitar strings, starting at the first string or the highest note E, which is indicated by the small II in this diagram, the second string is B, third is G, fourth is D, the fifth string is a, and the sixth, or the lowest string is another E. You've most likely have Fretboard indicators on your guitar as well. In this diagram, you'll see single diamonds on the frets, 357.9, and a double diamond on the 12th fret. The 12th fret is important because it indicates an octave above the open strings. So the notes played open are the same notes at the 12th fret. This is good to know for quicker navigation of the guitar neck. Now I want to review some basic chord shapes. These shapes are known as open chord is because they contain open strings. If you don't know these shapes already, I recommend learning them before tackling chord inversions. If you've been playing for awhile, you most likely already know these shapes. First I want to start with the a chord. Well, this chord, we don't want to play the low E string. We're going to start with our open a string. Let's position our fingers to play the second fret of the D, G, and B strings. We could do this by using three fingers to play the chord or use one finger to play all three of those strings. We also want to keep the high E string open. Next is the a minor chord. The only difference in this shape from the a chord is that will play the B string on the first fret rather than the second. I'm using my middle finger to play the second fret of the D string, my ring finger to play the second fret of the G string. And my pointer, or index finger on the first fret of the B string. Here again, we want to play the open a and high E string. This, Let's move on to the C chord. The C shape is very similar to a minor as far as finger positions, the difference here is we're going to move our ring finger to the third fret of the a string. The middle finger will play the second fret of the D string, and our index finger will play the first fret of the B string. The G and high E string will be played open. Now let's take a look at the D chord with this shape. We're not going to play the low E and H strings. The D string will be open. The G string will be played on the second fret with our index finger. The B string will be played on the third fret with our ring finger. The high E string will be played second fret with our middle finger. Moving on to D minor, the D string remains open, will play the second fret of the G string with your middle finger, the third fret of the B string with your ring, and the first fret of the high E string with your index or pointer finger. Next, I want to cover the E chord. One way to look at the shape is it's the same as the a minor chord, but everything is moved over or string, we play. This. Would the low E string open, the a and D strings on the second fret, the G string on the first fret, and the B and high E strings remain open. Now let's talk about E minor. E minor chord is the same as the E chord, but We'll take away the first fret of the G string. So we have the low E open. The a and D strings are played at the second fret and the rest of the strings are played open. Finally, let's take a look at the G chord. The low E is played with your middle finger at the third fret, the a string is played at the second fret with your pointer index finger. The D, G, and B strings are open and the ring finger plays the high E string at the third fret. I also want to include my preferred version of playing the G chord. Most of the fingers remain the same, except the ring finger will play the third fret of the B string. And the pinky finger is going to play the third fret of the high E string. Now that you've conquered the open shapes of the guitar, and lets put some of these chords together for the basis of your class project 5. Class Project: Choose Your Chords: At this point, you should be familiar with how to play some root position chords on the guitar. In this lesson, you'll choose some of these Chords and put them together to create a chord progression. I'm going to play a four chord progression with a mix of major and minor chords. For my major chords, I chose the Chords a and D, and for my minor chords, I chose E minor and D minor. Here's how they sound when I put them together. Now, it's time for you to pick some of these Chords and play them together for the basis of your class project. Now that you've created your root position chord progression, Let's go over how we're going to invert these chord shapes and where to place them on the fretboard? 6. Inversion Shapes and Fretboard Mapping: Learning all the different chord shapes and the guitar can be really daunting task. I'm going to show you a streamlined way of playing inversion Shapes using the B and G strings of your guitar has navigation. I want to start by taking a look at the shape used for a first inversion major chord for all the inversion Shapes. In this lesson, we're only going to place our fingers on the B, G, and D strings. I want you to practice this shape shown on this diagram, anywhere on the guitar neck by making this shape your playing our first inversion chord with the third as our bottom note. Practice moving this shape up and down the neck in different positions. Now let's take a look at the minor chord version of this shape. And easy way to remember how to switch from a major chord to a minor chord is to flat the third. With that in mind, let's take a look at the shape. You'll see that it is very similar to the major shape. And all that we changed is the fret on the D string is one Fred lower. I prefer to play this shape with my middle finger on the D string, pointer finger on the G string, and my ring finger on the B string. Once again, it's good idea to practice playing the Shape up and down the fretboard. Let's move on the second inversion, starting with a major chord shape, you might recognize this shape as being similar to the a chord. And while the finger positions are the same, remember that we're only playing the Bg and D strings. So the open strings are not incorporated. You could play this inversion shape by Fred a1 with your pointer, middle and ring fingers, or by using one finger to play all three frets at the same time. Since this is a second inversion or low note is the fifth of the chord, lets get used to this shape by playing it up and down the neck. Now let's take the second inversion major chord shape that you just learned and we're going to flat the third to get our minor chord shape, you may notice that the finger positions of the same as the a minor chord. Once again, the difference is that we're not playing the open strings. I usually play this shape with my middle finger on the D string, ring finger on the G, and my pointer finger on the B string. Now let's take the shape and place it up and down the fretboard. By now you've learned the first and second inversion Shapes. And it's time to figure out how and where to place these shapes on the fretboard. This is where you're going to learn how to take your root Position Chords and transform them using inversions. Let's take a look at first inversion chords. With first inversions, we're going to find where the root of the chord is on the B string in order to know where to place the shape. Here are the notes of the B string. Remember when learning to navigate notes that there are no sharps or flats between B and C, and E and F. For a second inversions, you'll use the G string to find the root of the chord and then place the second inversion shape on that fret. Here are the notes of the G string, and here's a Guide for all the notes on both the B and G strings. Now, I'm gonna go through each of the open chords that we learned earlier. I'm going to show you how to invert them using this method. Once again, I'm going to start with the a chord. Here you can see how the a chord has played in the open root position. Now for the first inversion, we have to locate where the a is on the B string. For this inversion, we're going to place this shape on the 10th fret. Let's move on to the second inversion of a. Again, we're looking for are root note, but this time on the G string, which in this case is on the second fret. I'll also point out here that you could play this up an octave on the 14th fret. You'll see that it's the same finger placement as the open chord, but in order to play it as an inversion, we don't want to play the open a string Now let's apply the same technique to the a minor chord. Remember when moving from a major chord, so a minor chord, all you have to do is flat the third, once again, we'll find the a on the B string at the 10th fret. To place the first inversion. For the second inversion, we just removed the open strings and we have our fifth on the bottom. Now let's take a look at the C chord. Here we have the C chord in root position. Here we can place the first inversion shape on the first fret of the B string. This case, the G string will be open, but if you want to fret the whole shape, you can move it up an octave to the 13th fret. Now, let's find where to place the second inversion by using the G string to find the root. In this case, C is on the fifth fret. Moving on to the D chord, here we have the D and root position using the beach string, we can find the D on the third fret using the G string, you can find the D on the seventh fret. Now let's apply that same technique to the D minor chord. The placement of the Shapes is the same as D major. Third, and each chord has been flattened. Moving on to the E chord, here's the E and root position on the B string. E is located on the fifth fret. So we're going to place our first inversion shape there to find the E on the G string. For the second inversion, you'll place your shape on the ninth fret. We'll flatten the third to place the minor inversion Shapes for E minor first inversion is again on the fifth fret. Second version is on the ninth fret. Finally, we have R G chord. Here's G in root position. G on the B string is located on the eighth fret per second inversion, we can either play G as the open string, or we can play all three strings up an octave on the 12th fret. Now, let's take this method and apply it to your Position Chords for your class project 7. Class Project: Inverting Your Chords: Now I'm going to demonstrate how to use this inversion technique and complete my class project. Once again, here the courts that I chose for my progression, a, D, E minor. D minor. Now I'm gonna go through each chord of my chord progression. The first chord is a major. I started with the first inversion, a chord with the root placed on the 10th fret of the B string. Next, I'm moving to the D major chord. I'm choosing to play this chord as a second inversion with this shape placed on the seventh fret of the G string. The third chord of my progression is E minor. I'm going to play E minor as a first inversion with the root placed on the fifth fret of the B string. Let's finish up the progression with D minor. Here I'm going to play the D minor as a second inversion with the root on the seventh fret. Here's how the progression sounds altogether using chord inversions. Now I'm going to play those same inversion Shapes, but I'm going to play it in a completely different style. Try it out yourself and see how it changes your plan. 8. Conclusion: Congrats on making it to the end of this class. By now, you should have a solid understanding of chord inversions and how to incorporate them into your playing. Remember, practices keys, so keep honing in those skills and explore all the possibilities Chord Inversions have to offer. Be sure to post your final project in the project gallery and post any questions you may have in the Discussions section. I hope you enjoyed this class and I wish you all the best and near future musical endeavors. I'll see you next time.