What chord is this?

[KeyKid75]

These’s a discussion on my local music theory forum. It’s a chord formed by stacking the first 6 notes of a whole tone scale: E, F#, G#, A#, C.

I take it as an F#9#11. What’s your opinion? Thanks.

[MathOfInsects]

54 minutes ago, KeyKid75 said:

These’s a discussion on my local music theory forum. It’s a chord formed by stacking the first 6 notes of a whole tone scale: E, F#, G#, A#, C.

I take it as an F#9#11. What’s your opinion? Thanks.

What is the bass note? If it's E, and the notes are in that order, it's an E Lydian, add2, sharp 5. 

 

Other names for it would depend on the bass note, but the nature of the whole tone scale is that it creates exactly this ambiguity.
 

[KeyKid75]

2 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

What is the bass note? If it's E, and the notes are in that order, it's an E Lydian, add2, sharp 5. 

 

Other names for it would depend on the bass note, but the nature of the whole tone scale is that it creates exactly this ambiguity.
 

Thx,but the presence of the tritone (E, A#) makes it less ambiguous sounding than the stacking pure fourths to me. It seems to have some “dominant flavor” at least. 

[stoken6]

Is it an E bass? And no seventh of any description?

The closest I could come would be Eadd9#11aug, but it starts getting a bit silly at this point. If you want those precise notes, score them.

 

Cheers, Mike

[ElmerJFudd]

By itself without context it’s not much. What you have is the first five notes of a whole tone scale. Which always sounds wonderfully ambiguous.  Anyway, what happens before and more after in the tune is what helps us give it a useful name.  

[analogika]

7 hours ago, KeyKid75 said:

Thx,but the presence of the tritone (E, A#) makes it less ambiguous sounding than the stacking pure fourths to me. It seems to have some “dominant flavor” at least. 

If you’re using it in a context where it feels dominant, C7 #5 #11 may be a valid description. 

[Al Coda]

5 minutes ago, analogika said:

If you’re using it in a context where it feels dominant, C7 #5 #11 may be a valid description. 

 

^^^^^^

THIS !

 

☺️

 

A.C.

[MathOfInsects]

7 hours ago, KeyKid75 said:

Thx,but the presence of the tritone (E, A#) makes it less ambiguous sounding than the stacking pure fourths to me. It seems to have some “dominant flavor” at least. 

That’s the exact tritone produced by a Lydian (#4), which in that context is extremely “Major” or even “Major 7” sounding.

 

Or could be a nice C#m6, with the Major 7. Or could be the upper structure of a C Altered scale, and so on.

 

There are multiple possibilities, none of which are defined solely by that note cluster. 

[Docbop]

So a whole tone scale to me that says from single line POV  altered 5's and natural 9.    Chord POV a scale of all dominants with altered 5's and natural 9.   So any chord symbol within those boundaries is fine.   

[funkyhammond]

As with most things, context is everything. Which is why you can have multiple chord symbols/interpretations for the same thing. And things can get even messier if you're going to consider implied functions based on a genre of music and the norms of that musical vocabulary. It's interesting that you wrote out the scale starting on E but chose F# as the root of your chord. You wanted a 7th in there, clearly. That's an ambiguous interpretation but probably makes sense in many jazz/blues contexts. The interesting thing about that (as with many shell/ambiguous chord voicings), is that bass players can change the chord just by the choices they make for the root.

[Docbop]

2 hours ago, funkyhammond said:

 is that bass players can change the chord just by the choices they make for the root.

Because the Bass player played it doesn't make it a root,  could be an inversion, approach note,  color tone.    So as you said Context is everything. 

[funkyhammond]

48 minutes ago, Docbop said:

Because the Bass player played it doesn't make it a root,  could be an inversion, approach note,  color tone.    So as you said Context is everything. 

 

I wasn't saying every note the bassist plays is a root. But even if you had a context, there might sometimes be more than one musical choice for interpretation of the chord, wouldn't you say? That's all I meant. 

[Rodan88]

Wasn't there an image of the notated chord in the original post?

 

As far as the bottom note of a voicing being considered as a bass note (root or otherwise) - if it's a mid-register chord or higher, the bottom note isn't functioning as a bass note at all, but rather as a chord tone.  ESPECIALLY in this example, where the chord is a cluster of major 2nds (whole-tone scale notes), and there is practically no distance between the lowest note and its closest neighbor.

 

In a spread voicing with the bottom note in the bass register, it's quite possible that the bottom note is functioning as a bass note.  But, even in that situation - even if the bottom note is REALLY low - it's still possible that the orchestration could have even lower notes.  That might create a murky situation/muddy sound/ambiguous harmonic analysis - but perhaps musical anarchy/unusual texture/emotional impact is exactly what the composer/arranger/orchestrator is aiming for!  These types of effects are used in films scores all the time, but they certainly have their roots in classical compositions, including those that aren't as "modern" as one might think!

[MathOfInsects]

Some ideas are being conflated here.

 

When people ask about the “bass” note, they don’t mean the note played by the guy who plays the bass. They also don’t mean “the lowest note on the piano while other instruments play lower ones.”

 

Harmony is defined by the lowest tone—the bass (range) note. To name a chord, you need to know the lowest note being produced while those upper tones are being played.

 

That won’t be the complete story, because you also need to know the function of that chord (that is, what comes before and after). But strictly speaking, harmony is defined from the bottom up.

 

That’s all that question means.

[analogika]

18 hours ago, Docbop said:

Because the Bass player played it doesn't make it a root,  could be an inversion, approach note,  color tone.    So as you said Context is everything. 

In this case, though, for example, if the bass played a C, it would pretty definitely be a C7 with alterations. If the bass was an F#, it would feel like an F#7 with alterations. 
 

Those would be pretty defining tones. 
 

Obviously, that’s not *always* the case.

[MathOfInsects]

Or an off-the-rack Ab(9) with a sharp5. 

[Docbop]

Where this gets messy or too many possibilities is where talking about harmony from a symmetric scale.   Symmetric scales are great for playing because they can be so many things, but when talking about them it's like going down the rabbit hole... it's this, it's that, to me it's ???

[funkyhammond]

3 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

Some ideas are being conflated here.

 

When people ask about the “bass” note, they don’t mean the note played by the guy who plays the bass. They also don’t mean “the lowest note on the piano while other instruments play lower ones.”

 

 

Sorry if I confused the discussion by bringing up a bass player. I wasn't confused about what you meant. I thought your very first reply was spot on given the limited information. I only brought up the bassist as a side point to illustrate the scenario of harmonic flexibility that can sometimes happen even within a context. It wasn't directly related to your use of "bass". Maybe I went a bit off topic. It's hard to know what perspective OP is bringing to the table.

 

6 minutes ago, Docbop said:

Where this gets messy or too many possibilities is where talking about harmony from a symmetric scale.   Symmetric scales are great for playing because they can be so many things, but when talking about them it's like going down the rabbit hole... it's this, it's that, to me it's ???

 

I was also thinking about that. But this isn't technically a symmetric scale anymore.  It's a whole tone scale with a hole. A w/hole tone scale?? 🤷‍♂️ I could see how this might have come up as an exercise where someone was thinking, let's take the ambiguous, symmetric whole tone scale, remove one note, and then what do we get? Hmm, let's post it on a forum as see what mayhem we can create.

 

[octa]

Gb9#11 4 2

 

just one of many options. I’d write it “E WT” on a personal lead sheet

[synthetic]

On its own, I'm hearing it as E aug (add 9 #11)

 

[Tom Williams]

That seven-wholestep cluster, arpeggiated (and sometimes played with a major third above), is the dominant chord leading into the verses of Stevie Wonder's "You are the Sunshine of my Life."

[SK]

Without a root, it's a whole tone cluster, for a "cloud" whole tone effect. 

 

 

 

SK