Originally Posted by MarioD
I was in a rush when typing the last message and I made a major typo. Those chords should have read:
1-C-E-G
2-B-C-E-G
3-A-C-E-G

Sorry for any confusion I may have caused.

Yes, you are staring to get it. If you study the picture in my previous post you will notice that the fingerings shown are on a guitar. IF there is only a guitar then any chord is an ambiguous chord because there is no bass. Attached is a picture of a GMaj7 as a guitarist could play it. The other chords listed is what the chord would be called if a bassist would play any note of the chord outside of the tonic. It can get very confusing when the bassist play any other note outside of the chord. Also attached is a guitarist playing a C chord in the 1 first inversion, i.e. E-G-C. The chord finder assumes the lowest note on the guitar is the bass note, Emb6. That is not the name of the chord if a bass player is playing any other chord note, i.e bass plays a C then the chord is called a C major, i.e. a C chord.
Mario, no need to apologize for confusion, I appreciate your efforts in explaining this from your perspective. This is the 1st time I’m being exposed to the idea that any chord played on guitar (and presumably piano) is in fact ambiguous without a bass player playing a note.

You say: “IF there is only a guitar then any chord is an ambiguous chord because there is no bass.”

Are you sure about this? If so, can you provide a reference for this? I understand that guitarists can play ambiguous or unambiguous chords. C-E-G would be a Cmajor unambiguous chord even if no bass player is present.

And here is my understanding of the tonic.

In music, the tonic is the first note scale degree (1) of the diatonic scale (the first note of a scale) and the tonal center or final resolution tone that is commonly used in the final cadence in tonal (musical key-based) classical music, popular music, and traditional music.

Finally, it's not entirely clear on how to interpret your images. Can you clarify by showing your example(s) in this format?

Guitarist Plays: X – Y – Z, (or X – Y) notes (an ambiguous chord)

If bassist plays U note, then the chord is tbd1
If bassist plays V note, then the chord is tbd2
If bassist plays W note, then the chord is tbd3


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.