E, Held by the Bass

All 62 qualities on the root E, across 10 families, drawn for this instrument. A son or a ranchera will use three or four of them; the rest are here for the bolero that reaches further.

This instrument is the whole bass section by itself — six heavy strings on a fretless neck, roots and fifths on the strong beats and an approach into the cadence, nearly every note doubled at the octave. Almost none of a chord is playable down here and almost none of it is wanted — the ensemble hears the bottom note as the chord, so what matters below is which tone of it gets chosen and which octave it is doubled in. There is nobody to play it in unison with, which is the one section that answers to itself.