In the last article we covered first and second inversions of major and minor triads. This week we’ll do some further exercises on these, and look at inversions of augmented and diminished triads.

Recap exercises

The following example simply presents a series of major and minor triads in second inversion, block form. After you hear the chord, stop the player and sing them back, first paying attention to the basic size of the intervals. On a second listening, try to figure out their quality:

Once you have spent some time with inversions of major and minor triads you can use the following example to test your skills. Click to read the rest…

The previous articles in the series have covered how to recognize the different qualities of triad – major, minor, augmented and diminished. Not only can we learn to hear the quality of triads, we can learn to hear their inversion. First we will briefly review the basic theory of inversions.

Inversions

Triads are made up of three pitches, a root, third and fifth. It is possible for any of its members to be the lowest note. A triad, therefore, has three possible positions, or “inversions”: root position, first inversion and second inversion, with the root, third, or fifth respectively, as the lowest note:

The three inversions of a triad

1. The root, first and second inversions of a triad

We spent quite a bit of time working on root position triads in an earlier article. We will begin studying inversions by first considering their interval content from the lowest pitch to the highest.

As we already know, root position triads contain stacked thirds, and a fifth from the root to the highest member. As we saw before, it is the quality of these intervals that determines its type.

We can observe a similar idea with inversions. Click to read the rest…

Once we are reasonably comfortable with intervals and triads, we can start to work on seventh chords. You may recall that a seventh chord is a triad with an added seventh above the root. The most common seventh chord in western music is the dominant seventh chord.

Dominant Seventh Chords

In C major the dominant seventh pitches are G B D F, G to F being the seventh:

Dominant Seventh Chord

1. Dominant Seventh Chord

This chord is a major triad built on V with a minor seventh above the root. Its solfege is so ti re fa. First we will learn how to sing it. Click to read the rest…