Modern Drummer founder Ron Spagnardi wrote an excellent book called Understanding the Language of Music, a Drummer’s Guide to Theory and Harmony. This book spells out the basics of theory and harmony in a very easy to understand way. It is a fantastic book for drummers looking to learn about the language of music beyond drumming. We are honored to reprint the parts of Ron’s book here in Modern Drummer for everyone to read and learn. This month we’ll learn about chord inversions. Let’s look at how triads can be inverted and played in different positions on the keyboard. An inversion is a chord with a note other than the root note on the bottom. Root position is when the note name of the chord is on the bottom. C is the bottom note of a C triad in root position. In the first inversion of a […]

October 2023 Issue