Originally Posted by Bass Thumper
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.
Bass is fundamental, if you'll forgive the pun. It's also the thing to which the various modes (syn church modes) are anchored.

It's quite possible that rootless voicings are used more by keyboard players than anyone else. Obviously it's a chording thing, but maybe it's less often used by, e.g., guitarists. I'd not really thought about it. A quick web search shows them for guitar.

Two things that keys frequently do that may be less used by other instrumentalists are the rootless voicings and voice leading. The former means no root notes and the latter results in at least some chords in inversions, i.e., not having the root note at the bottom of the chord ... we'll usually expect the bass player to supply that, whilst the bass player usually prefers that we stay out of their tonal area. That's a fair deal grin

Rootless voicing by themselves, almost(?) by definition don't really resolve anywhere ... the chord progression is never quite 'done'. They need the bass note for them to be able to resolve.

Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
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