Tag: negative harmony

This is the second part to the concept introduced the other day about using the idea of negative harmony, but reflecting it over a different way.

In a certain key (major in this case), you will have a tritone distance between the seventh and fourth scale degrees.

By locating the middle focal-point of the tritone (which will be the second scale degree of the major scale), you can use that as a point of reflection for a new kind of negative harmony.

So, as you can see chromatically, the second scale degree fits perfectly in between the raised seventh degree and fourth degree (assuming we are in the C major key):

Using that pitch as the centered point of reflection, we use this pattern as a way to create an alternative negative harmony:

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Back in the winter, I was told by a professor a different way of doing negative harmony – an alternative, one could say.

In the past, I have talk about the use and understanding of negative harmony, so be sure to read-up on it before diving into this new technique.

Anyways, my proposed two different ideas of this alternative to negative harmony by reflecting pitches over different point of the key/scale/pitch collection.

The first method was to reflect on the tonic. So in a C major key, we have the diatonic and chromatic notes of:

By reflecting the tonic onto itself, we get a formula like this:

Now, we can substitute original pitches in a harmony for new ones to get an negative harmony alternative approach.

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Some of you may have already been familiar with the concept. Others might still be yearning for a better explanation. And some might not have heard of this concept (like myself back in the summer of this previous year).

While this concept is not “new” in any form, I do what to introduce it as a new topic on this website.

Basically, negative harmony is the application of changing notes in a chords for new ones, but still have the same active and passive tendencies and the original chord. Meaning, if the original harmony had a tensional pull to resolve, so will this new chord based on negative harmony.

So, how does one get negative harmony?

First, establish the key that your harmonic progression is in. For this example, we will be in C Major. Now, find the two most-stable pitches: the tonic and dominant.

After that, find the pitch that meets in the middle. This will be the axis of our soon-to-be, point of reflection:

As you notice, there is no defined pitch in the middle of the tonic and dominant. That is not a problem, as it will work to our advantage as we make the point between the mediants the point of reflection:

And now you can see that we reflect the rest of the notes around the point between the mediants. This chart then shows what notes of the original harmony become in order to achieve negative harmony.

So, a F major chord of F – A – C , become D – Bb – G (or a G minor triad).

Play around with it, and experiment in different keys with different points of reflection.

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