4/24/2020 Negative Harmony Chord Chart

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DECEMBER 17, 2018

NEGATIVE HARMONY CHORD CHART

A chart of the common chords of tonal harmony and their negative harmony
mirrors. This isn’t meant to provide an introduction to negative harmony (there are
already great resources on that), but instead to provide a reference chart for
composers trying to incorporate negative harmonic concepts into their music. It’s
also meant to serve as a prequel for upcoming posts on negative mirrors of
common chord progressions, turnarounds, and jazz forms.

It’s possible to mirror chords across a number of axes, but for this and upcoming
posts I’m speci cally looking at the b3/3 axis. This is the axis Jacob Collier talks
about as “converting perfect to plagal” and maintaining equivalent “tonal gravity”
between the original and mirror chords.

My speci c process for deriving these mirrors was to ip each note of the original
chord across the b3/3 axis, then select the root note by re ecting the original root
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across the tonic (1) axis. Part 3 of Jazzmodes’ negative harmony series has some
more explanation on why it makes sense to select the root this way. In short, it’s
because this will cause the mirror roots to always move proportionately to and
opposite of the original roots on the circle of fths (descending fths become
ascending fths, etc).

Note that in chords without a perfect fth above the root, that method actually
gives a root note that isn’t in the chord. In those cases the mirror root is
unde ned/ambiguous, so I just picked a voicing that made sense for the given
mirror pitch class set.

ROOT GROUP CHORD MIRROR

1 I i-

1 Imaj7 i-b6

1 I7 i-6

1 I+ V+ **

1 i- I

1 i-7 I6

b2 bII vii-

b2 bIImaj7 vii-b6

b2 bII7 vii-6

b2 bii- VII

b2 bii-7 VII6

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ROOT GROUP CHORD MIRROR

2 II bvii-

2 II7 bvii-6

2 ii- bVII

2 ii-7 bVII6

2 ii° vii° **

2 ii-7b5 V7 **

b3 bIII vi-

b3 bIIImaj7 vi-b6

b3 bIII7 vi-6

3 III bvi-

3 III7 bvi-6

3 iii- bVI

3 iii-7 bVI6

4 IV v-

4 IVmaj7 v-b6

4 iv- V

4 iv-6 V7

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ROOT GROUP CHORD MIRROR

#4/b5 #IV bv-

#4/b5 #ivø7 bIII7 **

5 V iv-

5 V7 iv-6

5 v- IV

5 v-7 IV6

b6 bVI iii-

b6 bVImaj7 iii-b6

b6 bVI7 iii-6

b6 bvi- III

6 VI biii-

6 VI7 biii-6

6 vi- bIII

6 vi-7 bIII6

b7 bVII ii-

b7 bVIImaj7 ii-b6

b7 bVII7 ii-6

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ROOT GROUP CHORD MIRROR

7 VII bii-

7 VII7 bii-6

7 vii° ii° **

7 viiø7 bVII7 **

7 vii°7 vii°7 **

** ambiguous mirror root

ALTERNATE METHOD FOR DEFINING MIRROR CHORDS

Another possible way you could de ne a chord mirror is by re ecting the entire
chord-scale across the b3/3 axis and then constructing a chord using that chord-
scale built on the mirror root. The mirror triads would be identical, but the
extensions would change. For example, Imaj7 would re ect to i-7 instead of i-b6.

This might be more palatable because it uses familiar triadic harmony, but it would
also change the harmonic gravity between the original chord and its mirror. For
example, V7 and its mirror, iv-6, have the same harmonic gravity in their leading
tones (7->1 re ects to b6->5 and 4->3 re ects to 2->b3). If you instead used iv-7, the
voice leading would change and no longer perfectly mirror the original.

HOW TO MIRROR A CHORD-SCALE

A chord-scale can be mirrored the same as a regular chord. Select the mirror root
by re ecting the original root across the tonic axis. Then nd the rest of the notes
by re ecting the entire pitch-class set across the b3/3 axis.

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We can make use of a shortcut here using the above table because a given quality
of chord-scale will always re ect into the related quality of mirrored chord-scale.
This relationship is described in the table below:

ORIGINAL CHORD-SCALE MIRROR CHORD-SCALE

Lydian Phrygian

Ionian Aeolian

Mixolydian Dorian

Dorian Mixolydian

Aeolian Ionian

Phyrgian Lydian

Using that, any chord-scale can be mirrored by re ecting the root across the tonic
axis and using the mirror quality relationship from the table. For example, a
bIIImaj7 (lydian chord-scale rooted on b3) would re ect into a vi-7 (phrygian chord-
scale rooted on 6) because b3 re ects across the tonic to 6 and lydian re ects to
phrygian.

As with chords, this depends on the chord-scale having a perfect fth above the
root. If there isn’t a perfect fth above root, the resulting mirror root is ambiguous
and there are multiple ways to interpret the mirrored pitch-class set.

I’m not going to write a whole chart of these because they’re fairly easy to derive
from the main chord chart. Also, not all of the chords listed have a single
unambiguous chord-scale; some of them are dependent on the context in which a
chord is being used and/or stylistic considerations and that goes beyond the scope
of this post. Here are just a few to get started with:

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MIRROR
CHORD- MIRROR ROOT AND
CHORD CHORD-
SCALE POSSIBLE CHORD
SCALE

Imaj7 Ionian Aeolian i-11

ii-7 Dorian Mixolydian bVII9

IVmaj7 Lydian Phyrgian v-7susb9

V7 Mixolydian Dorian iv-9

Whole-half Half-whole
vii°7 vii°7
diminished diminished

References and further reading:

June Lee “Interview: Jacob Collier (Part 2)”

Jazzmodes “Negative harmony’s mirror world”

Rick Beato “Musical Palindromes & Negative Harmony (what?)” (Note: he derives
mirrors by re ecting everything across the tonic axis, which is why we end up with
different modal pairs.)

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