Learn Inverted Guitar Chords or Slash Guitar Chords
If you have ever spent some time looking at guitar tabs on the internet, you will have come across the concept of slash chords or inverted chords. They are chords represented as two names with a slash between them such as D/F#.
Traditionally a chord must be made up of a triad of notes. This triad will include the root note, its 3rd and its 5th. The guitar chords you normally play are in ‘root’ position.
This means that the root note is the lowest note of the chord. Whenever a note other than the root note is the lowest note in a chord you have a chord inversion.
Chords on a guitar must have at least 3 notes. This means that in any guitar chord there are at least two other notes that can be the bass note.
There are 3 common chord inversions – the first inversion, the second inversion and the third inversion.
For the first inversion the 3rd note of the chord is the bass note. For the second inversion the 5th note of the chord is the bass note. For the 3rd inversion the 7th note of the chord is the bass note (this is only used if the chord is a 7th)
The root note of a chord will always be the dominant note of the chords sound. When the root note is on top the chord is at it’s most stable.
The second inversion where the root note is buried in the middle of the chord is the least stable inversion.
Let’s look at the G major chord to explain inversions in more detail.
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