Name The Chord: Major and Minor Triads In All Inversions

Welcome to Name The Chord: Major and Minor Triads In All Inversions!

In this game you will be shown a three note chord (triad), either major or minor, in either root position, first inversion or second inversion for example, the chord below:

Is named B Major 1st Inversion, where 'B' is the root note of the chord, 'Major' is the chords tonality, and 1st Inversion is the position.

In this game the root note might not be the first note of the chord, depending on the chord inversion. The same as the Root Position game you can use the 'Hear Chord' button to either hear if it sounds major or minor, and / or use knowledge of how chords are built and how notes are arranged for each inversion (for more information on how the different inversions are made, click here, or click the info button in-game) to identify the tonality and inversion of the chord.

This game includes ALL 72 possible major and minor triads across different inversions rather than giving the option to work on a few at a time - just like the Root Position game, the process of identifying the chords in this game is the same no matter where they begin or how many white or black notes they contain, so once more don't be put off of chords don't look familiar! But dang, 72 chords sure is a lot - imagine how many options you'll have when you can identify all of them!

Note: It's also important to know that many of these 72 chords use the exact same hand positions (in fact 24 chords use only 3 different hand positions!) so in practice it is simpler than learning 72 unique positions.

Round Complete!

Information / Help

To play this game you need to know:

All 12 note names including sharps and flats in order to name the root note (in root position triads this is always the lowest / first note, in 1st inversion triads this will be the highest note, and in 2nd inversion triads this will be the middle note).

Then you will need to use either the sound of the chord to identify tonality and inversion, or alternatively your knowledge of the chord structures and note positions within different inversions. To hone your perception on the sound of different inversions try out the 'Identify The Chord Position' game, and the process for how inversions are created is shown below:

How Inversions Are Created

All major or minor triads have just three notes - for example C Major, notes C E G. There are only three possible orders of these notes on the keyboard provided we start on one of them and always play the next available note from the chord, for C Major, these are CEG, EGC and GCE - we couldn't have GEC because when starting on the note G and travelling up in pitch there is always a C before we reach an E. All of these chords are still C Major triads, just in different inversions, which we call Root Position, First Inversion and Second Inversion.

The animation below shows another way you can think of this, by starting in root position, then moving the lowest note up an octave to take us to first inversion, a process we can then repeat to get to second inversion.

Press 'Play Audio' to restart an animation from the beginning, with sound.

The Three Positions Compared

The same chord in each position. Notice that the same three notes are used every time - only the order changes:

C Major: Root Position

C Major: 1st Inversion

C Major: 2nd Inversion

You can use the method shown above to identify each chords' position / inversion.

Counting The Scale Notes

Hint: Major or minor triads will always have one scale note between each chord note when in root position, one scale note between the first two chord notes, and two scale notes between the second two chord notes in first inversion, then two scale notes between the first two chord notes and one scale note between the second two chord notes in second inversion. Below is a C Major triad shown in each of the three positions, chord notes highlighted in green, and scale notes highlighted in blue to demonstrate this.

Chord notesScale notes

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