“There is a lot of fun to be had by putting random alternative bass notes under a chord”: Pete Townshend, RayDavies and David Bowie all used thirdinversionchords – here’s why (and how) you should, too

Pete Townshend wears dark shades, a black jacket and white trousers as he plays a red Strat live with the Who in 2025.

Previously, we’ve looked at what happens when you swap around the notes in a triad and put the 3rd at the bottom (first inversion), or the 5th at the bottom (second inversion). In this next instalment, we’ll look at third inversion chords.

To create these, we add a dominant (aka flat) 7th to a triad/chord and move that to the bottom. In practice, these are generally notated as slash chords. For example, in an A/G chord (see Example 1), the b7 (G) is moved to the bottom.