Originally posted by doc-z:
Why would you want your autocomp to recognize rootless chord voicings? The autocomp should play roots to make correct bass lines. When you play in autocomp mode, your hands are two different musicians. Your left is your bass player, and your right is your soloist. Just play regular vanilla chords with your left, and use the hip rootless/quartal voicings with your right.
One of the advantages of having autocomp recognizing rootless chord voicings is that as a keyboard player, you could play a solo as you would if you were playing in a jazz combo (drums, bass, piano and or guitar/horns.)
If you were performing a solo in a jazz combo, you would mostly comp rootless chord voicings with the left hand and do a solo in the right hand.
With an arranger that has rootless chord voicings as a feature, you would not have to change your chord voicings technique much. In full auto comp mode, you can still use the cordless voicings in the left hand and do a solo with the right hand (with a solo instrument like organ, guitar, sax….) This way you still get the root of the chord being played because even if you are using rootless chord voicings, the arranger is smart enough to play the correct root of the chord with the bass sound.
If you wanted to do the same thing with an arranger that does not have rootless chord voicings, you would have to do a lot of major chord voicing adjustments that go out of the norm of playing jazz. To me that is too much work. In addition, you just can not get the same sound as if you were using rootless chord voicings.
A D minor 9th voiced rootlessly on an arranger as F1 C2 E2 is and sounds completely different from a make do voicing such as D1 E1 F1 C2 or F1 C2 D2 E2. Not to mention those chords where you have to play the root note, feels very strange in the hands.
In addition to full piano mode, this is another way I would play the arranger using rootless chord voicings. In autocomp mode, I would use a stile with just the drums and the bass. I would have a left hand sound with a piano and a right hand sound with an organ or some other solo type instrument. I would comp (play chords) in the left hand with the piano sound using chordless voicings knowing that the keyboard would smartly have the bass sound play the root of the chord even though I my self am not playing it. Then in the right hand I wood do a solo or what ever I want to do with the hand.
[This message has been edited by to the genesys (edited 10-17-2005).]
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