What In The World Is Figured Bass?

Good morning. This is Duane and we’re doing a series on music theory, called Good Stuff You Really Ought To Know About Music Today we’re going to take up figured bass. Figured base is not much used anymore, but if you went to a music theory class, you’d have to learn it for sure, and it was used very prominently in the baroque era and so on, and it uses two symbols - Roman numerals and then Arabic numbers.

Arabic numbers are the numbers we use, right? Roman numerals, you know what those are, like I, Roman numeral II and so on, so if you were the key of C, there’s eight scale degrees, right? So, that’s known as, if I build a chord on the first degree of scale, that’s Roman numeral I, if I build a chord on the second degree  that’s Roman numeral II.

Roman numeral III, Roman numeral IV, Roman numeral V, Roman numeral VI, Roman numeral VII, and that’s not Roman numeral eight, its Roman numeral one because it’s the same as where we started on I, okay? Now, notice if I build a chord on C, that’s a major chord, isn’t it? And so the Roman numeral would be an upper case Roman numeral, but if I build a chord on the second of the scale, that’s a minor chord, and so they would use a small Roman numeral ii.

Three would be a small Roman numeral iii because that’s a minor chord. Four would be upper case Roman numeral IV, five would be an upper case Roman numeral V, six would be a lower case Roman numeral vi, because it’s minor and seven would be a Roman numeral vii, it’s small, followed by a little degree sign, a little zero along side the Roman numeral, okay? So, part of figured base is the Roman numerals and sometimes the Roman numerals are caps and sometimes they are lower cased depending on whether major or minor, right? Okay.

But when we turn a chord upside down, into inversion, that’s called a I 6 chord, because the bottom note is the sixth below the top note, so it would be Roman numeral one followed by the Arabic sixth, okay? If they wanted the chord in second inversion, it would be Roman numeral one, followed by six, four –  because the interval there is a fourth, here the intervals are six, here the intervals are fourth.

So that’s second inversion chords are six-four chords, first inversion chords are six-three chords although in common usage they just assume the three, so they just say six chord, okay? So, in other words, if it’s in root position, it’s just Roman numeral, if it’s in first inversion its Roman numeral and then followed by a six, and if it’s the second inversion its Roman numeral followed by a six-four, Okay? And that’s really all you need to know about figured base.

There’s a lot more to it, if I have seventh chord, it would be a five chord followed by a seven – V 7 – and so on, but we don’t need to get into the intricacies of that, I just want you to know what figured base is and how it works. So there are just two elements, Roman numerals that identify the root, and Arabic numerals that tell the inversion.

***For lots more good stuff on piano playing come on over to my website at https://www.playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips – “Exciting Piano Chords & Sizzling Chord Progressions!”

Here’s a great little book on chords and chord progressions on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Chords-Chord-Progressions-Exciting-ebook/dp/B0076OUGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404158669&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+chords+duane+shinn

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upv88yiIxbQ

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