chordless

Adjective

chordless (not comparable)

1. Lacking chords.
2. Not playing chords; silent or playing one note at a time.
   • But a profound melancholy had taken possession of Franz, the two hardly exchanged a word, the violin hung mute, chordless, full of dust, in its habitual place .2008, Reginald Menville, Douglas Menville, Ancient Hauntings, page 119
   • It is a chordless affair, because it is out of commission .2013, Henry T. Sampson, Blacks in Blackface: A Sourcebook on Early Black Musical Shows, page 285
3. Without chords; involving one note at a time or dissonant combinations.
   • A boat slowly drifts under the bridge and out to sea, and someone inside it plays an untuned piano with a slow chordless melody.2007, Jason Murk, Tokharian Tales, page 96
   • Earlier work like the atonal music of pianist Sun Ra and bassist Charles Mingus as well as the chordless music of Coleman and Taylor foreshadowed free jazz.2009, Waldo E. Martin, No Coward Soldiers: Black Cultural Politics in Postwar America, page 62
4. (figuratively) Without synergy or harmonious combinations; One thing at a time.
   • Why the All-mover, Why the All-prover Ever urges on and measure out the chordless chime of things.1908, Thomas Hardy, The Dynasts
   • Hardy, though, considers it incapable of resolution: for him, nature as defined by physical science is simultaneously rhythmic and chordless, measurable and inexact, deterministic and unknowable.2020, Gregory Tate, Nineteenth-Century Poetry and the Physical Sciences