Slash chord

Chord and bass note

Chord symbols usually name only the chord, such as C for C major. If a particular note is to lie in the bass, you write it after a slash: C/E means C major with E in the bass. The notation is known above all from jazz and popular music, where chord symbols are the usual notation for accompaniments.

In the glossary: Chord inversion · Six-three chord · Six-four chord

Two cases

If the given bass note is a chord tone, the symbol denotes an inversion: C/E is the first inversion, the six-three chord, C/G the second, the six-four chord. That corresponds to what figured bass expresses with numerals.

If the bass note is, by contrast, not a note of the triad, the symbol names a foreign bass: D/C is a D major triad over the bass note C. The four notes C–D–F♯–A together give the dominant seventh chord D7 with the seventh in the bass, so the four-two chord; the symbol D/C and the designation D7/C here mean the same chord. Foreign bass notes often also stand for a pedal point or a descending bass line over which the harmonies change.

Useful in practice

In popular music the notation also serves simplification. F/D gives the notes D, F, A and C and so the notes of a D minor seventh chord, which can be played even by someone who does not know the symbol Dm7.

Distinctions

Every inversion can be written as a slash chord, but not every slash chord is an inversion. Unlike figured bass, which starts from the bass and gives the intervals above it, the chord symbol starts from the chord and names the bass additionally. In jazz a symbol with a slash can also mean a polychord, so two chords sounding at the same time. To keep that clear the bass note is then sometimes marked explicitly, for example as “F/A bass”.