What is figured bass in music?
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Figured bass is shorthand way of showing the distance the notes in a chord are above the bass (lowest note) of that chord. For instance, if there’s an G in the bass, you might write a 6 over a 4 below that. This means that, in that chord, there’s a note a 6th above the G (G A B C D **E**), and a note a 4th above the G (G A B **C**). Depending on your knowledge of music theory, you may notice that this is a C major chord (C E G) with a G in the bass, which means that this is a chord in second inversion (we count “root position” for the root – C – being the bass, “first inversion” for the third – E – in the bass, “second inversion” for the G in the bass, etc.). In fact, all second inversion chords of triads have that 6 4 interval, which is great, because it means that we can just write 6 4 and know that we’re talking about a triad in second inversion. Sometimes, we’ll also leave out some numbers in the figured bass – a triad in first inversion, for instance, has a sixth and a third above the bass, but we often just write 6 instead.
Figured bass is useful because it allows us to track the motion of notes above the bass and notice larger patterns in a piece of music, especially when used with roman numeral analysis (where, for instance, in C major, a C chord would be I, a D chord II, etc.). It also means that you can get the gist of a piece of music using only the bass line and figured bass.
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