What is a chord inversion?

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]What is an inversion? Sometimes you want to take your chord and you want to put it [music] in a different order or maybe you don't want a C in the root of it. So, one way that I teach this is I just say, "Hey, take your bottom note of this, your C of the chord, and let's put it on top."

[00:00:18]And that will [music] create an inversion. That'll be the first inversion, actually. Let's do that again. Let's take the bottom note here and let's put it on top.

[00:00:26]That will also create an inversion.

[00:00:27][music] And that is the second inversion. And then if we did the same thing again, we'd be back to root position. So, all of the chords, all of the major chords, all of the minor chords all have these inversions. And basically, an inversion is just taking the notes and playing them in a different order.