Mystery Chord

Dibblet said:

[...]

Bm - no need for the /D. The ukulele doesn have bass notes. [...]

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Huh? Define "bass notes", brother. As you've said, it's all relative.

In notating chords, "bass" is generally taken to mean the lowest note in the chord. If the lowest note in a particular voicing is not the root/tonic/name note of the chord, then whatever note is the lowest note is indicated after the slash, and is widely referred to as the "bass" note.

On a re-entrant uke the "bass" note will generally be on the C string. On a uke tuned low G the bass note will be on the G. So, even high or low G in the tuning can affect how we'd notate a chord!

As for the ambiguity of uke chords, it'd certainly be easier to choose a best candidate to name a chord if the uke had a couple more notes to contribute to the clues. With so many missing intervals, context does indeed provide the best guide to how best to see the identity of a chord. :shaka:

buddhu said:

Huh? Define "bass notes", brother. As you've said, it's all relative.

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I play the piano. Ukulele chord voicings are just about exactly the same as close right hand piano voicings so that's what I relate it to. The bottom note of right hand chords is pretty much irrelevant. The left hand deals with that stuff or, in a band, the bass deals with it. That's where I'm coming from - that's all.

Ah, I see what you mean.

Yeh, on fretted string instruments we certainly don't have the advantage of a left hand holding down the bass. Piano kind of has one over on us there!

So, without the benefit of a keyboard or bass player, those slash chords can be pretty important for a solo uke or guitar treatment of a tune. Especially if there's some kind of significant movement in the bass line without which the nuances of the tune may suffer. Doing the best we can with bass notes is probably the closest we can get to trying to approximate what the composer had in mind - especially if the song was written on piano, or originally arranged with a very specific bass part.

I'd love to play piano but, beyond a few simple chords, my head just isn't wired for it. I can't get that particular kind of left/right hand coordination going on. Bummer.