Originally Posted by MarioD
Steve, I believe there is a major problem in your thinking. When considering what a chord is one MUST account for every note on EVERY instrument. Thus the above example you must consider the notes on the guitar AND the note(s) on the bass. If there are more instruments then one must include all of their notes for a chord name. In the chord analyzer I included in my other message do the following and see what the possible chord names are:
C-E-G
B-E-G
A-E-G
Aren't these chords ambiguous since the root isn't specified? Depending on the root, the name of the chord changes.

Maybe I do have a problem with my thinking, so I asked a chat bot for an example where the guitarist plays an ambiguous chord and the bass player could add 3 different notes to form different chords between the guitarist and bassist. This is what I got:

Guitarist plays E-G (an ambiguous chord, what is the root?)

If Bassist plays C it results in Cmaj
If Bassist plays D it results in Dsus2/4
If Bassist plays F it results in Fmaj9sus2

Please verify this, chat bots make errors too.

If there is no error here, this is exactly what I’ve been asking for but in a Joni Mitchell song. In this made up example, Joni would play an ambiguous E – G chord and Jaco would play a C, D or F. The final (composite) chord depends on what Jaco decided to play.

Remember the Levitin quote?
“Joni’s genius was she creates chords that are ambiguous, chords that could have two or more different roots.”

https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677
BiaB 2026 Windows
For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.