Originally Posted by Gordon Scott
FWIW I think it's the presence of a bass note, played by whomever, that anchors the chord.

Just about anything else has the potential, at least, to be ambiguous unless that bass note is present.

We have on keyboards, and I presume also on most or all chording instruments, what we call rootless voicings, which rely on someone else, normally the bass player, to supply the anchor for the chords, however it's also not that unusual to play those rootless voicings solo. The effect is of both some ambiguity and some lack of stability, which helps to keep the music evolving.
I had little idea on how important the bass is until this thread.
I think I'm slowly understanding this, but I think more discussion is needed to really clarify this.
What if in your studio there is no song and no key, you just play C-E-G (with pitch increasing from left to right) as a chord on your piano. Is that an ambiguous chord?
And no one else has used the term "rootless voicing", I think that brings some clarity.

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.