Originally Posted by Bass Thumper
Originally Posted by Notes Norton
Many years ago, I worked with a bass player who was one of Jaco's early teachers. He said that Jaco learned so quickly that he soon ran out of things to teach him.
I don’t know much about Jaco except from what Levitin is saying about him and that he was quite talented and left an imprint and influence on the bass guitar.

But I wonder if anyone has experience with these “ambiguous chords”. If so some simple examples that an amateur bass player could understand would be useful. And if they could be restricted to 2 or 3 note chords then we’d be able to easily play them on our keyboards and guitars to explore how they sound.

I’m aware of Cmaj, Cm, C7, Cdim, etc., I understand these have C as the root. But I haven’t dealt with the kinds of chords it’s been said that Joni used in her music.

Any Joni fans out there that can identify such chords in her songs?

Personally I think Jaco made them ambiguous by his note choices.
In Mario's example, Jaco would not be playing the root of C - Bb - Gm .
His note choices were themselves melodic and weaved thru the chords many times.

Including sometimes maybe a 9th or 6th instead of the triad.
Example - C chord by a guitarist with bass playing an A suddenly makes that C chord ambiguous.
Is it C6, Am7, C/A .. kinda depends on what happens next and previous (IMHO)

Oh, and another trick would be to thumb the root softly while adding a harmonic (or harmonically related note) to cause the chord to have a different sound (become ambiguous to what it was)

Here is Jaco playing with chords, the chords are not that complex and it's a slow song (I have the notation of this and a couple other WP albums)
Just him, sax, keyboards and drums.

.. or just listen to The Chicken .. you'll get the idea. The root was there but the chords can go anywhere.

Last edited by rharv; 01/04/26 11:41 AM.
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