Monthly Archives: June 2010

Of course not! You don’t have to learn anything you don’t want to learn. Besides, figured bass is hundreds of years old; it is obsolete, irrelevant to today’s musical culture, and all it will do is bog down your music education, when you could be learning something more useful and relevant to your musical life and endeavors.

Some of you, I’m sure, are either saying, “Amen!,” or you’re asking, “What is figured bass anyway?” Please allow me to give you a brief historical overview before I argue against the previous paragraph.

Instrumental music has been an important part of our musical culture for several hundred years, although that has not always been the case. Music, as it is today, evolved from singing. Over the centuries, vocal music settled in to a general standard of four voices, which we traditionally designate as  soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, from highest to lowest. As instrumental music became more prominent, we still called different melodies “voices,” even when there were no human voices in the music. So, in a musical texture, even if it is all instrumental, we call the top voice soprano, the lowest voice, bass, and the inner voices alto and tenor.

Figured Bass

In the seventeenth century there was a great demand for new music that led to a system of musical shorthand, called figured bass, that enabled composers to avoid writing out complete keyboard parts. If you read lead sheets and chord charts, this should sound familiar to you. Because the system of chords, as we know it today, had not yet been developed, performers thought of harmony in terms of intervals above a bass line. So, instead of chord symbols above the melody, as it is today, there were numbers below a bass line. The keyboard player knew what harmonies to play based on the numbers below the bass.

When the performer played the figured bass, or if it is notated as below, it is called a realization:

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We teach figured bass early on in a music theory curriculum because figured bass symbols are still the standard for how we identify chord inversions, and certain melodic movements within a given harmony (i.e., suspensions).  And, believe it or not, it’s still the best way to do it. Trained musicians all over the world will understand what you mean when you say, for example, “play a G six-four chord.” At the moment, this might sound rather strange to you, but figured bass is very logical, and not difficult to learn.

Having said this, we actually use very little figured bass in music theory. We call it figured bass because the numbers we use originated with the figured bass system. In other words, you don’t really learn figured bass; you learn a system of identifying chord structure. And this system, although hundreds of years old, is still the basis of how harmony works today in most musical styles. Therefore, it is far from irrelevant. Furthermore, learning this system will open a whole new world of harmonic understanding and possibilities to you, that will only enrich your musical life. See this article for more thoughts along these lines.

In the Free Music Resources area of this website, I have included a chart of Figured Bass Symbols and Usage. However, for the purposes of these music theory lessons, I only will go into detail on the symbols we use for chord inversions. When we get to other topics, such as suspensions, I will refer to the other figured bass symbols as necessary.

The next lesson, will cover the details of the figured bass symbols we use to label chords and inversions.

Next Lesson: Labeling Chord Inversions

Music terminology throughout the centuries has been strewn with inconsistencies. One of those inconsistencies is the term inversion. In music, there is interval inversion covered in this music theory lesson. Also, there is melodic inversion, textural inversion, contrapuntal inversion, set theory inversion, and I even may be missing a few. In this lesson we’ll cover yet another type of inversion: chord inversion.

Students sometimes make chord inversion harder than it really is; but the only thing mysterious about it is the term. Chord inversion is nothing more than which note of the chord is the lowest. Our last couple of lessons covered triads and seventh chords. A triad has a root, a third, and a fifth. A seventh chord has a root, a third, a fifth, and a seventh. When we learned these chords, we stacked them neatly in thirds, and the root was always the lowest note. When a chord has its root as the lowest note, it is said to be in root position. Music would get rather boring if chords only happened in root position. In fact, it is difficult to find, even in the simplest of music, every chord in root position. More often than not, chords happen with other chord members (3rds, 5ths, and 7ths) as the lowest note. When this happens, we say the chord is inverted.

Triads in First and Second Inversion

When a triad or a seventh chord has the third as the lowest note, it is in first inversion. It doesn’t matter how many upper voices there are, or how they are arranged. If the third of the chord is the lowest sounding pitch it is in first inversion.

The video clip below is a simple demonstration of a C major chord in first inversion. It starts in root position. Watch how the third of the chord is moved below the root, making it the lowest note and a first inversion C major chord. Then the upper voices are moved around, but as long as the E is the lowest note, it is a first inversion chord. Even if a second E appears along with the other pitches above the lowest E, it is still a C major chord in first inversion:

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When a triad or a seventh chord has the fifth as the lowest note, it is in second inversion. Again, it doesn’t matter how many upper voices there are, or how they are arranged. If the fifth of the chord is the lowest sounding pitch it is in second inversion.

The video clip below is a simple demonstration of a C major chord in second inversion. It starts in root position. Watch how the fifth of the chord is moved below the root, making it the lowest note of the chord and a second inversion C major chord. Then the upper voices are moved around, but as long as the G is the lowest note, it is a second inversion chord. Even if a second G appears along with the other pitches above the lowest G, it is still a C major chord in second inversion:

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Seventh Chords in First, Second, and Third Inversion

Seventh chords have three inversions since there are three notes besides the root that can be the lowest. First and second inversions are the same as the triads: a first inversion seventh chord has the third as the lowest note, second inversion, the fifth. Third inversion is where the seventh of the chord is the lowest note. Again I want to emphasize that how the upper voices of the chords are arranged, how many voices are involved, etc. have no bearing on chord inversion. Inversion means only which chord member, the third, fifth, or seventh, is the lowest.

The three videos below use a keyboard to show each of the inversions. Each starts with a G7 chord in root position, then highlights the chord member (3rd, 5th, or 7th) that is moved an octave lower to make it the lowest pitch. Then the inverted G7 is played.

Chords can be voiced in any number of ways. Below are more examples of a G7 chord in root position and various inversions:

If you listen carefully to the audio examples in this lesson, you should notice that the character of a chord changes when it is inverted. Each chord member of a triad or seventh chord has its own tendency. We’ll get into these tendencies shortly, but first we will learn how to label chord inversions, which brings us to the topic that everyone loves: figured bass!

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