Inversions – An inversion is when you re-arrange the notes in a chord. For example, A minor is made up of A,C,E but if you move A to the end and get C,E,A then you get the first inversion of A minor. You can do it again to get E,A,C which is the second inversion of A minor. You can do this with any chord and it helps to ease up the transitions when you’re moving from chord to chord. For example, C major and A minor are made up of C,E,G and A,C,E. When swapping chords, it can sound very blocky if you move all the notes to a new position. However, with C major and A minor, you can keep the C and E in the same position, because both chords have these notes, and move the last note to whichever is in the chord i.e. G if you’re moving to a C major from an A minor.
Voice Leading- You can do this with chords that don’t even have the same notes in by simply seeing which notes are closest to each other and swapping those. For example, B minor to C major have no notes that are the same, B minor is B,D,F and C major is C,E,G. However, you can swap the B-G, D-C and F-E because they’re all the closest to each other. Voice Leading helps to stop the blocky sound and help it sound a lot more smooth in transitions.