So, this week I started practicing major chord inversions as a warm-up exercise on bass. Inversions are chord permutations. Right now, I’m just doing really basic ones – we take a major chord (root, 3rd, 5th) and change the order of the notes being played.

• Root position: This is the standard chord sequence. We play the root, the 3rd and the 5th, in that order. We can also add the octave, if desired, since its the same note as the root.
• 1st inversion: Here, we play the 3rd, 5th and then 1st. So, instead of 1-3-5, we play 3-5-1. The 3rd essentially becomes the bass note, or lowest note of the chord, instead of the 1. We can add the bass note again, at the end, so it can be extended to 3-5-1-3.
• 2nd inversion: Here, we start on the 5th and move up, so we play 5-1-3. Like before, we can extend this with the bass note again, making it 5-1-3-5.

Those patterns can be played on any root, or in any key, of course. If you play in F-major, you’ll need to account for open strings, of course. This might be true for other keys way down the neck as well.

Now that I’ve started practicing inversions, I think about them as the equivalent of modes, but for chords. The mode of a scale uses the notes of a given scale, but starts on a different note. For example, C-Ionian starts on C. D-Ionian uses the same pattern/notes, but starts on a different root. Inversions use the notes in a chord, but start on a different chord tone from the root and add the other chord tones by ascending.