Chord Inversions and Voicings

A C major chord contains C, E and G. But nothing forces you to play them in that order, or packed tightly together. The way you arrange the notes of a chord is called a voicing. Two voicings of the same chord have the same name, but they don't sound the same and they don't connect the same way. That's often where the difference lies between a loop that sounds amateur and one that sounds produced.

Three ways to lay out the same chord

Listen to the same C major chord played three times, with a different note at the bottom each time.

When the root is at the bottom, the chord is in root position. When the third is at the bottom, here E, it's in first inversion. When it's the fifth, G, it's in second inversion. To go from one position to the next, just take the bottom note and move it up an octave. You heard it: root position sounds the most stable, first inversion a little lighter, and second inversion less stable, as if it were standing on tiptoe.

On the grid, the shape changes with each inversion. In root position, the gaps are four then three rows. In first inversion, three then five. In second inversion, five then four. So don't rely on the shape alone to recognize a chord: gather its notes, and look for the one that, placed at the bottom, gives you two stacked thirds. That's the root.

Connecting chords with as little movement as possible

Now here's a loop in A minor, Am, F, C, G, played in the most naive way: every chord in root position. Listen to how the whole block jumps from one place to another.

Now listen to the same progression, but with each chord taken in the position closest to the one before. For each note, you look for the nearest note in the next chord, which is often the same note or its neighbor.

You hear the difference right away: the second version flows, as if several voices were singing together. Look at the grid: between Am and F, two notes don't move, A3 and C4, and the third moves up just one half step, from E4 to F4. Musicians call this voice leading. The practical rule is simple: keep the shared notes where they are, and move the others to the nearest note of the next chord.

Close or open

So far, the three notes of each chord fit within less than an octave: that's a close voicing. It sounds compact and precise, which suits a house stab or a rhythmic piano chord. If you spread the notes over more than an octave, you get an open voicing, wider and airier, which often works better for pads and washes of sound.

The simplest way to open up a close chord is to take the middle note and move it up an octave. Listen to C major in close position, then opened up this way, with E moved above G.

The open voicing sounds bigger even though it contains exactly the same notes. It also has a practical advantage: it leaves a gap in the middle, where a melody or a vocal can slip in without fighting the chord.

The bass on its own, the chords in the middle

In a track, a chord is rarely alone. A bass or an 808 usually plays the root, all the way at the bottom, and the chords sit above it. That separation gives you a lot of freedom: since the bass already provides the root, you can invert the chords on top however you like, and the ear will still hear the chord of the bass. It's the lowest note of the whole thing that decides the position.

Listen to the stability the bass brings: on top, the chords glide smoothly, and underneath, the bass lays the foundation. On the other hand, if you really want to hear an inversion, put the third or the fifth in the bass: that's what a bass line does when it walks down C, B, A under chords that barely change. We'll see how to write that in the lesson on chord names.

That leaves the question of register. For chords, the safest zone is roughly between C3 and C5. Lower than that, the thirds get muddy, as you heard in the lesson on consonance; higher, the chord gets thin and starts competing with the lead, the hi-hats and the vocal. The midrange is where a chord sounds full without getting in anyone's way.

Our chords still have only three notes. In the next lesson, we'll add a fourth, and sometimes more, to get the warm colors of lo-fi, house and R&B.