How To Write Chord Progressions With NEGATIVE HARMONY [Simple Explanation]

hello internets nice to see you today they're gonna see how negative harmony works negative harmony it's actually a very simple idea and it's been made mysterious because all the explanation I've seen out there gloss over a number of little details once you know those details though negative harmony is actually very easy so let's start seeing how a major scale a standard major scale pork and so let's work in C major the notes of C major C d e f g a b those notes though are not all created equal some of those notes are stable and some other are active specifically C E and G so the notes of the tonic triad are stable and all the other notes D F a and B are active active means that they want to resolve into another note they want to be followed by another note for instance the seventh note the B wants to be followed by a C so it has this upward tendency the sixth note da wants to resolve down on G the fourth note the F wants resolve down F and finally the second note the D wants to resolve but it's pretty much indifferent if you resolve it up to E or down to C now when we take into account those tendency to move of those notes you'll see that the first chord of the key C major maybe the note C if Angie is perfectly stable because it's made only by stable note but for instance the fifth chord of the key G major that is made by the notes G B and D once to resolve because it contains those B and D notes that wants to resolve into the C and the e note respectively and the fourth chord of the key F major made by the notes F a and C wants to resolve the F and the a note respectively to the E and G North stay with me here we are getting to the negative harmony really so nowadays not see I've just seen are the white keys on a piano but we need to see them in the chromatic scale so let me add also the black keys of the piano and that's what happens and we can also put them on a circle this way now here's the negative harmony part if we slip the major scale around these axes every note of the major scale gets mapped gets transformed into another note so for instance the C note becomes a G note and the G note becomes a c-note and the a note becomes an E flat and vice-versa an F note becomes a D note and vice versa a B naught becomes an A flat note and vice versa and so on and so forth and what happens is that our major scale c d e f g a b gets mapped into a C minor scale C D e-flat F G a flat B flat C but even more important we notice that all the stable notes in the C major scale C even G get transformed into all the stable notes in the C minor scale C E flat and G and all the active notes in the C major scale D F a B get transformed into active notes into the C minor scale D F a flat B flat but it's even better than that because all the active notes had wanted to resolve up like beef or D get transformed into notes that wants to resolve down like a flat or F and vice versa so here is what negative harmony is is to take a melody or a chord or a chord progression and transform it this way note by note so if I have a similar chord it gets transformed into a C minor chord if I have a G major chord it gets transformed into an F minor chord since all the stable notes become stable notes and all the active notes become active notes we can be sure that wherever we start and wherever we end we get the same level of tension in the melody or the chord and all the relationships all the resolutions are respected for instance a short melody it contains only the notes B and C gets transformed into a short melody that contains only the notes a flat and G and so if the original melody or chord progression sets up some tension and then resolve it so the transformed chord progression or melody will do exactly the same now by far the most common way to use negative harmony is when we get the 5th chord of the key so let's say I take a chord progression like C F G C if I apply the negative Armani only on the G chord this G code becomes an F minor chord and my career progression becomes C F F minor C you can hear how this F minor as some tension just like the G major has some tension and this tension pushes you towards the final C chord now here's the fun if instead of having a G triad I had a G 7th chord so C F G seven C and they apply negative harmony to this G 7th only I get a D half diminished chord the notes are D F a flat C and the chord progression is now C F D half diminish C again negative harmony keeps stable note into stable notes and active nodes into active nodes so since the original g7 chord had some tension in it the final the diminished chord has some tension in it too and they resolve into the same stable C major chord now I can apply this to other chord progression to let's say I have C a minor F G I could apply a negative harmony only on the a minor and the G chord the a minor chord would be transformed to an E flat chord and the G major as we've seen to an F minor so my final chord progression is C E flat F F minor [Music] or I could keep the GSEs and change only the a minor in front a flat of course I could also change the F into its negative harmonic counterpart G minor but this is generally not done because it does not sound particularly good I mean here death I'm changing only the F into G minor micro progression is C a minor G minor G major [Music] it doesn't sound particularly good and is because negative harmony is not foolproof is not that every possible change will work it's just that negative harmony gives you some option and then you have to decide what sounds best let's another couple of example my chord progression is C D minor g7 C I can change D minor only into his negative harmonic counterpart b-flat and it sounds good or I can change only g7 into the deep half diminish or I can change both D minor ng7 [Music] or I can even do a partial change so I'm gonna keep C as C for the whole bar when the miner comes I'm gonna play D minor for the first half bar and B flat for the next half bar and when the next chord g7 comes I'm gonna change the first half I'm gonna play F minor for half bar and then G for another half bar and end up in C [Music] Here I am applying negative harmony to chord progression but you can apply if two melodies to just take every single note of the melody flip it around against that axis play the new melody and hear how it sounds you can apply this even to a whole song and see what happens now question you might have right now is why we flip all those not along that specific axis and not any other axis and the answer is because this is the only axis that transforms stable notes into stable notes and active notes into active notes and also transforms the major scale the C major scale into a C minor scale any other axis will not transform active notes into active notes and stable notes into stable notes and so when you transform your course this way it will now sound good because you are messing up all the tension structure of your chord progression so negative harmony is simply flipping notes around these axes and transforming melodies into other melodies and chords into other chords there is really not much to it beyond that it's very useful it creates interesting harmonies but it's not a big mystery the thing here is that you can make the most of negative harmony only if you know your standard harmony the right way the more you are familiar with your chords and harmony and then the more the negative harmony will work for you because you have more possibilities more chord progression in which you can flip chords into the negative harmonii if you are a guitar player you can learn advanced harmony straight on your fretboard with my course complete chord mastery where we cover everything from triad extended jazz chords progression substitution moving out of key modulation augmented sixth chord dissonant harmony harmonizing melodies in different styles and especially how to translate all that in actual guitar parts that you can play live or in studio you can find a link to complete chord mastery in the description you can take the complete code mastery course whether you are an absolute beginner or you are already advanced and these beakers we are studying together starting from the basics but we do those Basics in a different more coherent way and to normally see so even an advanced player will learn a lot of new things by seeing harmony this way now how are you going to use negative harmony if you have any more questions about this or you have any other questions about any other topic in music theory please write it in the comment I want to make more videos like this when I answer your questions if you like this video click on that like button or smash it I'm not going to hold this against you if you like this channel subscribe and make sure to click on notification so you took will tell you every time I put up a new video this is the Mazzilli of history for guitar calm and Alti next time enjoy

Channel: MusicTheoryForGuitar

Views: 1,230,859

Rating: 4.9466686 out of 5

Keywords: Negative Harmony, music theory negative harmony, Jacob Collier, how to use negative harmony, negative harmony explained, music theory for guitar, tommaso zillio

Id: qHH8siNm3ts

Length: 12min 19sec (739 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 04 2019