venjacques

For RezZ, I think we should talk about what power chords are in general. As GuitarBizzare has mentioned, the power chords are "diatonically ambiguous". But they take the concept of the barre chord - a chord with at least the root, third, and fifth represented. The power chord cheats this feat with only representing the root and the fifth. What you're talking about seems to be with just the root present, thus ignoring the fifth. Technically, if you only have one note, there are only 7 chords it could possibly represent in any given major or minor key.

If you're in the key of C major, for example, you have C major, d minor, e minor, F major, G major, a minor, and b diminished for possible chords. Therefor, given a general feel for the key, you can start to assume quite a bit of information. If you play C A F G, I'm going to assume they're just the roots of the chords. Interestingly enough, the first 3, C A F spell a descending F major chord; but that's hardly relevant for chords. What I mean then is if you play these 4 notes and I get a feel that you're in C major anyway, I'm going to assume they are C major, a minor, F major, and G major. The ambiguity is quite profound, but it's stable enough if I have a general sense.

Another thing to take a look at is a bass guitarist. He is responsible for basically one note at a time. If he's playing just a riff without a fellow guitarist/keyboardist to help him out, he's playing one note at a time. Chances are, unless there's a very nice counterpoint between him and the vocalist, that he's playing root notes every step of the way. The good news is, if you're in a certain key, the choices of what he's able to play are limited to about 7 in most cases.

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