The Positive Impact Of Negative Harmony

Remember negative harmony? Jacob Collier mentioned it at one point a couple years ago and the whole music world went nuts. Whatever happened to that? Anyway, now that the dust has settled a bit, I figure it's time to take a closer look at the theory and see what it actually has to tell us. And it turns out? There's something pretty cool at the heart of it.

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Also, thanks to Jareth Arnold for proofreading the script to make sure this all makes sense hopefully!

[tone]

Some additional thoughts/corrections:

1) As always, I make no claim to have discovered any of this. Levy, Coleman, and Collier all alluded to the note-function thing in one way or another. in fact, Coleman's initial conception was melodic, not harmonic, so individual notes are an especially important part of his version. I haven't seen any of them explicitly lay out the concept of function pairs, at least not in a formalized way, but it's a relevant, extant part of all their work. The names are mine, but I'm just shining a light on the idea, not claiming ownership.

2) When I say the system isn't well-defined, I just mean that it doesn't really exist much in the literature. In addition to the lack of a wikipedia page, Google Scholar turns up basically no relevant results. That doesn't mean it's not useful or valid: It just means it's still in the process of formalization.

3) One of my favorite results of this system is the fact that Imi7 inverts to Ima6, not Ima7. This matches most harmonizers' intuitions: The Ima7 chord is good at the start of a progression, to create motion, but it's not good at creating _rest_, because the major 7th interval is too dissonant, so while in minor it's not uncommon to end on the Imi7 chord, in major if you want to resolve to I but you don't want to drop down to just a triad, it's much more common to add the major 6th instead. (In fact, Ima6 _is_ a voicing of Imi7 borrowed from the relative minor.)

4) The specific chord observations I made at the end are not, in and of themselves, groundbreaking. There's some more interesting results, but I wanted to focus on the obvious ones to demonstrate the premise of the model. Feel free to experiment with it yourself and see if you can't find anything more interesting.


5) Some people are objecting to the claim that the undertone series doesn't exist in nature, so let me clarify that a bit: When you play a note on a normal instrument, you produce overtones, but not undertones. There are ways to contrive the undertone series in specific experimental set-ups, but it is not a noteworthy part of the sounds we're most used to hearing. You can synthesize the undertone series through mechanical means, which means that to an extent it does exist, but being able to produce a thing under controlled experimental conditions is not the same as that thing existing in nature, and when we're talking about what human beings are used to, that distinction is incredibly important.

[TheViolaBuddy]

Those pairs of notes are really interesting. "Leading tone" and "root" are terms you hear often in terms of functions of notes, but the other ten are less talked-about, certainly not in this sort of orderly categorization.

The "uncanny notes" also explain why, to my ear, of the modes of the major scale, Lydian and Phrygian (and Locrian, of course) sound the most unusual/interesting, since their characteristic notes when compared to normal major/minor are the flat 2 and sharp 4 (and flat 5, for Locrian), which are these uncanny "alien" notes, while the raised (natural) 6 and flat 7 in Dorian and Mixolydian are the hollow notes, which sound less jarring and thus less unusual.

[lordofthekhaos]

The undertone series does exist in nature! You can create undertones by gently dangling a piece of paper and a tuning fork next to one another so that they touch, allowing the paper to vibrate in frequency with the tuning fork, but so that the paper misses every second, third, fourth (or so on) vibration. I haven't explained it well, but there are videos on youtube demonstrating this.

[neurotransmissions]

YES! I’ve been waiting for this video forever! Awesome analysis. Now Excuse me while I go listen to Smashmouth in negative harmony.

[mrclay]

Well done. A lot more illustrative than the simple mechanics of negative harmony.

[xxXthekevXxx]

DON’T be afraid to create a video because someone else already covered the topic. I’m subscribed to *_your_* content and have never heard of the other guy, so without you I would have never heard of negative harmony :)
Thank you for the video

[SasuNaru]

I don't know anything about music, and it doesn't help that the only things I know about it are from the other way of naming the keys (Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si) and some of the vocabulary is a bit strange for me, but that doesn't stop me from trying to grasp the concept you're trying to explain and I did keep up with your comments all the way through.

I'm a writer, so I'm well versed on that topic, but music has always been a huge component of my art, so I'm really glad you make this rather 'silly' drawings for concepts so intriguing.

Plus, now I got the inspiration for two new characters for my book extrapolating the properties of two of the pairs that you mentioned so, thanks.

[Ha_Wa_]

I think something worth mentioning is that when you invert a chord with upper extensions, it can be thought of as inverting the triad and the extensions separately. When inverting a V7 chord, the V triad becomes a iv chord, and the seventh of the V chord becomes the sixth of the new iv chord. This way the perfect/plagal duality is still consistent, and a tonic m7 still inverts to a tonic M6.

[joemaddock]

Like, I have to comment again just to emphasize... that system of note groupings at the end is completely genius and maybe one of the most insightful music theory things I’ve seen in a long time!

[nikopack]

Weird, but intriguing. I love your take on this, especially in chord qualities. I've always wondered how certain chords resolve to certain others.

[joemaddock]

Whoa... I love that system of grouping notes you show at the end!

[Veritas-TheGoader]

You have such an awesome channel. I enjoy and learn so much. What I really want you to know though. The GUMMY BEARS at the end of each of your videos, is absolute pure genius and I watch just for the gummy toss. It shows compassion, humor, intimacy, and a lot of the Character of your channel. Keep up the great work!

[QuikVidGuy]

I wish this had come out before your IIIm video, because then you could've explained that IIIm maybe doesn't sound quite tonic or dominant because it has a leading tone but isn't unstable enough to be a decent departure from the I

Also hey, an explanation for the minor plagal cadence

[awildfilingcabinet]

0:27 see, now you get it

But seriously, YouTube videos are usually where I go when I want to learn any music theory, including your channel. Maybe people in the music community were talking about it, I just heard all star in negative harmony and thought that was cool.

[joshuaharvey]

Honestly, you don't need to add anything. Just compiling it all into one place and presenting it coherently is difficult and rewarding enough. Thank you.

After watching the video, this is a fascinating concept and I'll probably be using it as I learn to compose. I like this idea a lot.

[bryansodred]

Loved how you drew the Tri-force symbol when referencing "three's". LOZ OOT is the single-most greatest gift to humanity since fire

[cactuspearjam]

A menu of notes— I like such menus. I came up with a mental ‘menu’ when I started playing at blues jams; it was specific to the genre and better developed for major blues. This adds several things to that idea. Good work!

[rhandhom]

It's incredible how you broke into negative harmony and found a gold nugget such as this.

[samueldesouzamalaquias]

I had similar ideas about that subject some days Ago. It's wonderful to think about the function of each note on the scale and its negative version

[jeremiahsweeney]

Glad to see this, and glad for that freah take on the theory! Two things I’ve discovered about negative harmony: there’s a simpler workaround for major and minor chords (including any extensions they may have:) if you look at just the root, you can invert about the root of the scale. In C, G is a 5th above, so it’s negative is F a 5th below. Then you invert the quality of the triad and its extensions: major and minor flip to the other. With extensions there’s an added step in addition to changing from minor to major or major to minor: 7ths become 6ths, 9ths become 11ths. This trick falls apart with symetric triads diminished and augmented, but I noticed a pattern a bit harder to describe with the circle of ficths with how those move.
The second thing I noticed is that negative harmony also provides a way of understanding modal mixture as well as opens up other modal options not commonly employed when using modal mixture.