Recognizing inversions
For beginners, inversions can be difficult to recognize because they appear so drastically different from the original triad. Think of an inversion as shuffling a playing card off the bottom of a deck of cards to the top. That is to say, raising the lowest note in the chord up an octave shuffles it to the top. This results in a new and different interval between the new top and old top notes.
In the figure, a Major triad CEG consists of intervals of four (green) and three (yellow). The 1st inverted chord EGC consists of intervals three and five. This introduces a new interval color-code for five, red. The shuffling process is repeated to get the 2nd inversion of the triad GCE. No additional color is needed for the 2nd inversion GCE since the green that disappeared in the 1st inversion is back in the 2nd.
The chord names are “C Major,” “C Major 1st inversion”, and “C Major 2nd inversion”.
For minor triad inversions, it is yellow that disappears and reappears. In this example, the base triad is DFA, the 1st inversion FAD, and the 2nd inversion ADF.
The chord names are “D minor,” “D minor 1st inversion”, and “D minor 2nd inversion”. Observe that the root of the original base triad carries over to the names of the inversions instead of “refocusing” the name to the new lowest note. As a result, for triad inversions, remember to identify the base triad name as the one associated with the red notehead.
Therefore, for both Major and minor triad identification, the color red in combination with yellow or green serves as a “red flag” that the chord is an inversion. (However, an interval of 5, red, may also appear in 4-note chords, suspended triads, and elsewhere that are not necessarily inversions.) The position of the red notehead also defines which inversion it is (when on top it’s the 1st, when in the middle it’s the 2nd). As with their base triads, the notehead patterns (notehead shapes and spatial separations) are different among inversions with different degrees. But the color pattern remains the same.
The color-coding summary for Major and minor triad inversions.
Thus, only three colors are needed to read Major triads and their inversions, minor triads and their inversions, diminished triads, and augmented triads.