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Negative Harmony: Source

Negative harmony is a harmonic technique where the circle of fifths is divided into mirroring halves by an axis of tonality. Notes are replaced with their negative equivalents on the opposite side of the axis. For example, in the key of C, f becomes d and chords like C major become their negative minor equivalents like C minor. A jazz musician can use negative harmony to transform melodies and chord progressions into new and interesting sounds by replacing notes and chords with their negative versions across the axis of tonality.

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Miguel Marques
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95 views3 pages

Negative Harmony: Source

Negative harmony is a harmonic technique where the circle of fifths is divided into mirroring halves by an axis of tonality. Notes are replaced with their negative equivalents on the opposite side of the axis. For example, in the key of C, f becomes d and chords like C major become their negative minor equivalents like C minor. A jazz musician can use negative harmony to transform melodies and chord progressions into new and interesting sounds by replacing notes and chords with their negative versions across the axis of tonality.

Uploaded by

Miguel Marques
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© © All Rights Reserved
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SOURCE : https://www.michaelfluegel.de/negaharm/negative-harmony.

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Negative Harmony
We love music

Negative Harmony is a harmonic tool. It was first described by Ernst Levy, who was a Swiss musicologist, composer, pianist and conductor (1895-1981). For the Jazz
Musician, this tool is interesting, because it helps creating new sounds.
What is negative harmony? How is it created?
An axis of tonality is defined such that the circle of fifths is divided by that axis into mirroring halves. e.g. in the key of C, the axis would be drawn between C and G;
in E-flat, it would be drawn between E-flat and B-flat. Look at the table for the related negative solution in the key of C:

As you can see, in the key of C the f becomes d. This procedure you can use for putting the melody to its negative but also to create the negative chords for a
progression. In the key of C, we create the negative of a C-Chord: c becomes g, e becomes eb and g becomes c. The C-Chord in C has a negative Cm-Chord. In the
key of C, we create the negative of G: g becomes c, b becomes bb and d becomes f. The G-Chord has a negative Fm-Chord. The Progression G-C in the key of C
becomes a negative Fm-Cm Progression.
For example: the first bars of "All the Things", Ab, could be transformed like this:

The first 8 bars of the composition "All the Things" will become this:
The discussion also is about having only replaced the harmonic progression to its negative, but not the solution. In this case, our II-V-I in C - progression would
sound like: Bb6 - Fm6 - C
Have fun to check out new sounds!

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