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Just to expand on Pat's answer, there is a figured bass symbols for all type of inversion including root position.
The picture above shows the complete figured bass symbol and how it will be denoted in analysis. As you can see root position triads and 7th chords have their own complete figured bass symbols, but reduce drastically because how common they ...
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TL;DR
For pianists, play the X chord with the right hand and the Y bass note with the left hand. For guitar/bass bands: guitarist plays the X chord and bassist plays the Y bass note. (With thanks to @piiperiReinstateMonica)
TOC
There are three main parts to this answer that can be read independently of each other.
What does it mean? (includes subsections ...
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The "root" of the problem (so to speak) is that the exercise transcribed the piece incorrectly. The A (edit: in the bass) should actually be an F#. See this score on iMSLP, page 6, the measure before the "im tempo" on line 5.
So @phoog is correct. As given, the figure should be 4-3; but as composed, it would be 6-5.
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I see at least two reasons:
Tonal music is really built on the contrast of consonance and dissonance; the inherent tension and release of that dichotomy is what moves tonal music forward. Your second progression only uses consonant major and minor triads, and so it lacks much tension. But your first progression includes a dissonant seventh chord that brings ...
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Who is it meant for, are you writing the notation for jazz players, pop/rock or is it a hymnal or what? Cmaj7 is not that strange, but it's just written communication from people to people, so you are allowed to take your target audience into account. If you mean that the keyboard player should keep the same right-hand chord and the bass should step down, ...
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As a bass player, I am typically trying to either play something unexpected/less than intuitive, or really awesome. Only when I am asked to fulfill a role in a band with a traditional approach to the bass part do I consistently end up relying on standard sorts of lines or the expected notes (there are definitely times where it sounds better to just chug on ...
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They are figured bass numbers, as used under bass lines in (primarily) the Baroque era to indicate harmonic content to be improvised by continuo players such as the harpsichordist. The numbers refer to the diatonic intervals above the bass. Look at your 6/4 example above. The two distinct notes above the bass note are a sixth and a 4th above, hence 6/4. This ...
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A chord is typically defined by intervals of thirds, minor or major. Intervals are the distance between two notes - if a note is three half steps apart, it is a minor third. If it is four, it is a major. Here is a little visual representation of intervals on a piano in the key of C. Not sure what those numbers on the right are...
A typical chord is ...
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You need to understand the difference between close and open voicings. In close voicings the notes are arranged in thirds or seconds. Inversions of close voicings are created by moving the lowest note up by one octave. So the close voicings of C7 are
C E G Bb (root position)
E G Bb C (first inversion)
G Bb C E (second inversion)
Bb C E G (third inversion)...
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I can offer the physical explanation, which helps me understand all of this. In my answer, I'll briefly describe how hearing is produced so that the notion of the fundamental frequency and harmonic frequencies make good sense too. This will set up the explanation for why major chords in root position have a natural euphony--a euphony that inverted chords ...
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Yes, you generally double the 3rd of the chord. It's the chord note that is easier to resolve. Let's take this example in C major, a simple I bii V I:
You can see that both the neapolitan chord and V use the note D (flat in the first chord, natural in the second one). This is usually considered a bad harmonic relationship (in two chords played next to each ...
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You write an augmented 6th chord on the flattened supertonic by applying the same Italian/French/German formula to the flattened supertonic as the conventional Italian/French/German Augmented 6ths do to the flattened submediant.
For example, in C Minor, the German Augmented 6th on the flattened supertonic is D♭ - F - A♭ - B, while the regular old ...
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The thing you need to learn is what notes are in a chord. It doesn't matter how they are placed in a chord; it still is the same.
The basic chords are built on thirds. So, take the notes you have and try to put them in order of thirds. We need a Root, a third (major or minor) and a fifth.
The fist chord you have is: G-E(bass clef) C-G (treble clef).
The ...
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I agree with the answer and ideas provided by @Tim and would like to add a few of my own.
The thing about group accompanying is unless the music is completely arranged you can’t predict what the other person is going to do so how could one play the same notes as the bass player? Held root notes will clash with anything linear the bass might play. The same ...
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I think the confusion comes when ideas are lumped together. From a harmonic perspective, the bass note determines what is the inversion of the chord and given C in the bass and E-G-C the chord is a C in root position.
That being said however, from a pianist perspective, the close form in the upper voices is a C chord in first inversion. When grabbing chords ...
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Inversions are always worked out from the bottom note. Thus using a C triad, in closed form, C E G is root, E G C is 1st inversion, and G C E is second. That's equivalent to your app's root=0, 1=1st inv., 2=2nd inv. and 3=3rd inv.
In open form, C at the bottom makes it a root, E at the bottom makes it 1st inversion, and G makes it second. That is regardless ...
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I think you have outlined two of the uses of inversions in your questions already.
To add a bass line to the chords that are not just all roots.
To put the melody note "up on top" so it is the highest note sounded even when it is not the highest note in the chord. (e.g. An E note in the melody over a C major triad)
There is one more reason I would like to ...
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Yes. They have root position, first inversion and second inversion which we have also seen with triads and are exactly the same with the root on the bottom, the 3rd on the bottom, and the 5th on the bottom respectively. However we also now have third inversion which has the 7th on the bottom.
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I would argue that there are other uses of inverted chords.
One other important usage is for dramatic reasons. A composer may set up a clear upcoming cadence, but at the moment our V chord resolves to tonic, the bass hops down to 3 and leads us to a I6 chord.
Although this can be understood as making a more melodic bass—and it could even be understood as ...
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This is an F dominant seventh chord. The inversion is determined entirely by the lowest note, so here it would be first inversion.
How I identified the chord: I recognised F-A-C as an F Major chord. But even if we ignore that, when going up from A (A-C-E♭-F), C (C-E♭-F-A) or E♭ (E♭-F-A-C) we get a major second every time. A chord, by definition, is a stack ...
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The earliest version I can think of is Bach's Musikalisches Opfer which is a series of canons Bach composed after given a theme by the King. The music can be played forwards and backwards simultaneously harmoniously in various ways (refer to the video).
I also remember reading a score of Mozart's violin duet piece called "The Mirror". To play this piece ...
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It's not a different chord, and in terms of guitar I wouldn't even think of it as a different voicing. It's an inversion! That's what the term is for, to describe taking a particular chord structure and changing the order of notes so that a different note is on the bottom. Guitar voicings tend to have specific structures, like closed triad, spread triad, ...
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Excellent question. I agree with you that there is no substantial difference in the treatment of the 4th in these two examples. If I were labeling the chords (which is not the same as doing an in-depth musical analysis), I would mark both examples as root-position I until the dominant harmony comes; the points where the bass touches the 5th and 3rd are (as ...
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You are correct that resolving the German 6th to a V results to parallel fifths (Ab + Eb -> G + D). This is one of the rare times where the parallel fifths are allowed. People refer to these specific parallel fifths as Mozart fifths.
They call them as such because Mozart did this quite often. Wikipedia provides some examples from his works and this one from ...
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Yes, any seventh chord has inversions. No matter what chord quality, the seventh chords are inverted the same (actually, all chord qualities are inverted the same way).
It's possible to invert ninth chords (and beyond), you just have to reconsider the method you use to produce inversions. The way most people learn inversions is by taking the bottom note of ...
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I consider second inversions less stable, because to me they sound less stable. Not because I made calculations and got such and such numbers.
If there's people to whom second inversions give different feelings than they give me, then maybe those people might say that they don't consider seconds inversions less stable.
Theory describes, theory does not ...
answered Oct 9 '19 at 10:02
piiperi Reinstate Monica
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We typically classify these chords by what their bass notes do. Thus a passing six-four is so named because the bass functions as a passing note; the same is true for the arpeggiating six-four.
Your auxiliary six-four is also often called a "pedal" six-four, and once again that term describes the bass. The cadential six-four, a subset of this pedal ...
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It is not considered a different chord. The name is still the same, the notes are still the same, they are just in a different order - so they are effectively a different voicing.
They will sound different, which is why inversions are used - you can impart a number of different flavours of sound to a piece of music.
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This is a tonic (chord I) seventh chord in second inversion. It could also be written I7c; the use of numbers is called figuring (or figured-bass). (However, it is odd to see D7/A written below it, as this implies a dominant seventh chord, rather than a seventh chord on chord I.) The "I" refers to which degree of the scale the chord is built on; in this case ...
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