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I'm just throwing this out...

The word "inversion" is useless about 99% of the time for me, as a teacher, except in elementary examples such this:

CEG, EGC, GCE

The problem is that the word "inversion" is really only about what the bass note is doing. For older students I used the term "open voicings" and teach this concept almost from the beginning.

But for younger students I simply call them "scrambled" chords.

They are often called "slash" chords, such as C/G, which, although not necessarily 100% specific as to the arrangement of the notes, is somewhat accurate and thus helpful because it identifies the bass note, so you don't have to remember it.

My students (and I) do prefer that as compared to an "inversion", which I agree is very non-specific, but I still want them to know both terms, as both are used in the music world. Scrambled, on the other hand, is not.

Slash chords are not going to explain this to little kids:

CEG, CGEC

But slash chords are what I teach.

I teach slash chords first, Roman Numerals later, so C/E, later I6 (and so forth).

This reminds me of when I taught theory via the RCM book. The lower level began with closed chords in root position i.e. CEbG, and the next one had closed chords with inversions which were named root, 1st & 2nd inversion, i.e. Cm, Cm/Eb, Cm/G. The first assumption that we take for granted (until someone asks) is that CEbG is the "real" chord, and that the inversions are less real since they are inversions of the "real" thing.

There was a big lurch at open voicing when we went past RCM (and where we stopped), because suddenly the neat little package of a closed chord with one of each note was gone. The fact is that a C minor chord is what it is regardless of how many of each note is there, or in what order, or how they are spaced. I like the idea of "scrambled" because that's what the chord actually is. Though the term invariably makes me hungry.

Does the term "triad" cover an exactly three-note chord, and "chord" include the chords with more notes, even if it's only three pitch classes? (And triads are also chords.) If I'm right in the terminology, then C4 E4 G4 is a chord and a triad, while C4 E4 G4 C5 is a chord but not a triad. So, am I wrong or right?

Gary D, interesting you bring this up. I've been doing a lot of chord analysis recently and hadn't quite brought it into consciousness that the only feature of the arrangement of a chord that my analysis language gives me, is what the bottom note is, and not how many other notes it has or what order they are in.

Strictly speaking, a triad is three spaces or three lines in a row, so C4 E4 G4 is a triad, but C4 G4 E5 is not.

This is why I teach small kids this way. I say you get to "clone" as many Cs, Es, and Gs as you want, and you can move them around, like building blocks. You can have every C, E and G on the whole piano (which acually happens in an arpeggiated chord, both hands). So the idea that any note in the triad can be moved to the top, but it remains "root" so long as the bass note remains C.

That is not an easy concept for a six year-old, in words, but the idea is something they can grasp immediately.

That's why I teach "scrambled" first, since the concept takes in triads AND open voiced chords with any bass note in the chord. Also, what do we call it if the voicing is not open, just blocked but six or seven notes?

CEG CEGC (two hands), contains the C major triad twice, but with an extra note. Since there are a bazillion ways to build a simple C chord, the terminology gets very confusing for people who are not super advanced in theory.

To me, the concept of triads explains why the chord has the name it does, and why certain combinations of notes have simple names and others have messy names. C vs. Cmin vs. Csus vs. C7, etc. This may just reflect the order in which I learned these things.

Do you teach triads first, or start with scrambled chords? If you start with the scrambleds, how do you explain the names?

This question might be inappropriate for this forum, but the discussion regarding scrambled chords is of considerable interest to me as a student, as I need some guidance on how to unscramble chords. In particular I'm trying to play Al Lerner's arrangement of Moon River, which looked straightforward enough, but as I got into it I am having a lot of trouble identifying the scrambled chords. He uses 9, 11, 13, which would be OK if the root were on the bottom, but they are not and they seem to fold back on themselves. Is there a methodology for identifying scrambled extended chords?

Lucy Chu presents chords in root position, then uses the expression "turned up" and "turned down". For example, she shows the root moving up an octave as "turned up". From root position, she moves the top note down an octave and calls the chord "turned down".

Her website is www.e-znotes.com if you want to see a video demo of her explanation for young kids.

If you think about it, a major triad is a good place to form "home base", with any root. Then you can think of keeping the outer notes (the 5th), then moving the middle note. The brings you to minor, but also things like CDG (C sus2) or CFG (Csus). (CDbG and CF#G will eventually end up MAYBE being PART of much more complicated chords.)

I drill relentlessly on all the major triads, both hands as ASAP, with pedal, for rote/ear, but when we run into those same chords in open voicings, then it literally becomes a matter of unscrambling.

If we come to a new chord, we analyze it by talking about it's "dictionary form", meaning closed, no duplicated notes, in root position.

But that only works for closed positions, no doublings. My young students are past that.

Gary D., thank you for explaining.

When you say "CDbG and CF#G will eventually end up MAYBE being PART of much more complicated chords," I am reminded of something I have been told about Paul Hindemith, which is that he felt that the usual chords used up until his time left out vast swathes of possible combinations of notes, and he wanted to explore those other combinations.

Hmmmm, I wonder if Hindemith wrote piano music. I remember a wonderful, and very hard, sonata for flute by him which I played for All-State auditions in high school.

Since no one else is volunteering, I'll take a stab at this.

If we take Gary’s original premise that chords that are not in “close” root position are scrambled, then, to “unscramble” the harmonic voicings in Moon River, one needs to place the notes of the chords back into close position.

Since a typical piano arrangement has chords arpeggiated, our first task involves getting a sense of the harmonic rhythm of the piece, as in how often do the basic chords change? It is a generalization, but one can safely assert that (in Moon River) the basic harmony changes at the beginning of each measure. So, for each measure, if one isolates the arpeggiated notes of the harmonic accompaniment, and “stacks” them up in thirds as much as possible, one ends up with a very “tall” dotted-half-note chord for each measure of the piece. Typically, but not always, the lowest note of the accompaniment in that measure will be on the bottom (will be the root) of these chords. We would like to have these harmonic notes stacked in thirds, so if we have, say E, C, D, B, and G. we would stack them into C+E+G+B+D.

Our next step is to determine how many notes from our stacked up chord in each measure are actually important to the basic harmony, and how many of the notes are extraneous. While this is more subjective than scientific, if one simply plays the melody in the right hand, while sustaining these dotted-half-note block chords in the left hand, it will be fairly simple to eliminate notes, usually from the top of the stack downward, that are not critical. In our example above, we may discover that the D is simply a passing or connecting tone, and adds nothing to the basic harmony.

While working on this process (and it is an analysis process), pay particular attention to any accidentals. While these may not be absolutely essential to the harmonic structure, they frequently add important colorations (extensions) to the basic chords.

Lastly, and as KeyString is already pointing out below with her loaded question, this is not necessarily a trivial process. Fortunately, here Henry gave us a very simple, and elegantly beautiful song with which to work. And if this is a difficult subject for many, take heart: many a graduate thesis has been devoted to this type of harmonic analysis.

Ed

... using the ear(s)?

In a way, once you get to Hindemith or Bartok (and so on), or even Debussy, you in the world of someone like Thelonius Monk. Eventually ANY combination of notes is "right", if you like it and convince the world it works. It's just that eventually you run out of names.

That is a sonata for flute and piano. Both instrument parts are equally important. Hindemith wrote a whole bunch of sonatas for piano and other instruments. He is not for everyone, but he is one of *my* favorite composers!

I try to use just my good ear.

Incidentally, Moon River has an interesting chord progression. In bars 14 to 17 the chords move around the circle of 5ths from an F# chord to a C chord. This progression uses 7 chords and I think it is something of a record.

I did have a reason for mentioning, it however. Almost none of my theory books mention hearing at all. It is all done according to rules, and an intellectual identification of major, minor, augmented which can be done by counting semitones or even piano keys.

Completely off-topic (apologies begged!): Hindemith wrote a sort of Requiem, a musical setting of Walt Whitman's civil war poetry, entitled "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed". I found a nearly-worn-out set of LPs at the local library, but wanted a nice copy of my own. After extensive searching, I uncovered a Deutsche Grammophon set, played by the Berlin Phil (I think), that had to be imported from Germany. Immagine my, well, SURPRISE, when, true to European tradition of translating operas into the country-of-performance's language, Walt Whitman's poignant poetry had been translated into, and sung in, German!

Now, back to chords>>>
Ed

Once you have doublings, then would chords technically be called inversions anymore? I would think it's beyond 1st inversion, 2nd inversion.

I guess that's what you're saying. With doublings they are not inversions (much less "turned up" or down). Now I see why "scrambled chords" is how you're describing them.