# What should I study to create harmony like this?



## dannydawiz (Feb 3, 2017)

At 1:10 something goes on in this part that I don't really understand. It's dissonant but in a good way and I'd like to emulate it but don't really know how to go about it.


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## Sebastianmu (Feb 3, 2017)

If I had to emulate this, I'd start by experimenting with polychords and see were it would get me. You can have two different major chords in each hand (on the piano) that have very dissonant root notes (say A and E flat or B flat), and they _sound_ very dissonant, but at the same time maintain some of the happy-major-sound somewhere inside.


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## dannydawiz (Feb 3, 2017)

Sebastianmu said:


> If I had to emulate this, I'd start by experimenting with polychords and see were it would get me. You can have two different major chords in each hand (on the piano) that have very dissonant root notes (say A and E flat or B flat), and they _sound_ very dissonant, but at the same time maintain some of the happy-major-sound somewhere inside.



Hey thanks a lot sebastian. I've always been aware of the existence of poly chords but I admit I've never really tried implementing them in any of my music consciously.

One thing I've always gotten confused about when it came to polychords is whats the difference between that and say just a normal extended chord?

For example if I get c major and play g major ontop of it ( C E G B D G) aren't I just playing a Cmaj9 chord?


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## Sebastianmu (Feb 3, 2017)

dannydawiz said:


> One thing I've always gotten confused about when it came to polychords is whats the difference between that and say just a normal extended chord?
> 
> For example if I get c major and play g major ontop of it ( C E G B D G) aren't I just playing a Cmaj9 chord?


Yes, they are the same notes, and C major + G major would be one of the least interesting polychords out there - to the degree, that it usually wouldn't be interpreted as a polychord at all. But you are completely right, any polychord (also the complicated ones) could also be regarded as a conventional chord with extensions. I think Milton Babbitt famously opposed the concept of 'polytonality' as utter nonsense for this very reason. But I think he's wrong, the difference is in the way you think about them. (Also, as a side note: 'resolutions' don't apply in the way they would conventionally or in jazz harmony.)

When I was young (gee, that sounds ridiculous) I always wondered how to achieve very dense harmonies (i.e. chords with five notes at least) without it sounding like _jazz, _which, at least to me, always had that difficult-to-describe _sweet-sour-thing_ going on. And I looked into all kinds of theoretical approaches, up into really quite obscure ones (like Howard Hanson's), but the thing that solved the problem for me were polychords, really. And I'm entirely sure it comes down to someone sitting at a piano, thinking: "ok, I want C major down here, and I wanna put Csharp minor here on top, and I want them to clash!" Or, for something a little less dissonant, but still cool: "I want to have C major down here and D major up there." And then you just go along and try them out, and you find that you have a whole spectrum from not-dissonant to super-dissonant, that you can control quite effortlessly and without to much theoretical baggage to think about!

(I do realize that this is a very piano-based approach, though, and it might be less enjoyable to explore on other instruments.)


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## Anthony (Feb 3, 2017)

Sebastianmu said:


> Yes, they are the same notes, and C major + G major would be one of the least interesting polychords out there - to the degree, that it usually wouldn't be interpreted as a polychord at all.


This is interesting. What you said here seems to suggest that the degree of dissonance is explicitly involved in deciding what constitutes a polychord. 

And just curious, would you consider a quintal-voiced chord like A E B C G D a polychord? You can think of it as two somewhat ambiguously-defined 'smaller' chords (two sus2 chords?) possessing that unsettled polychord quality. Then again, maybe it's just one really 'big' unsettled chord.


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## JohnG (Feb 3, 2017)

As you may know, most people decide what a chord "is" based on where it came from and where it goes to. 

Some people get very worked up about these things but as one person said above, it kind of depends on how it works for you -- how you think about it. Whether it resolves or whether there's a feel of a tonal centre in the passage or not, or a feeling of movement by fifths or thirds or something can inform one as a listener / composer.


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## Anthony (Feb 3, 2017)

JohnG said:


> As you may know, most people decide what a chord "is" based on where it came from and where it goes to.


This is intuitive and actually simplifies things because, by considering the harmonic context, you eliminate (or reduce the likelihood) of certain interpretations. Thanks...


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## SBK (Feb 3, 2017)

Just play wrong notes


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## Sebastianmu (Feb 3, 2017)

Anthony said:


> And just curious, would you consider a quintal-voiced chord like A E B C G D a polychord? You can think of it as two somewhat ambiguously-defined 'smaller' chords (two sus2 chords?) possessing that unsettled polychord quality. Then again, maybe it's just one really 'big' unsettled chord.


I don't have a problem calling that a polychord of A minor and G major, if the context somehow justifies it. It also depends on the voicing though. Under most circumstances, there's probably a better theoretical framework to be used. I think what matters is not so much if it's more or less dissonant, but: does it make anything clearer that wouldn't be clear otherwise?


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## Anthony (Feb 3, 2017)

SBK said:


> Just play wrong notes


I excel at that!


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## Sebastianmu (Feb 3, 2017)

On a second thought, in my mind I'd usually think about aebcdg in quartal/quintal harmonic, yes. Only if the voicing would be ace bdg or something like that, were the constituting chords would show some sort of being treated as such, I would come to think about it as a polychord.

[EDIT: grammar ]


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## ctsai89 (Feb 3, 2017)

the progression is largely based on circle of fifths with augmented/dimished tone adjustments. Jazz harmony.


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## Anthony (Feb 3, 2017)

Sebastianmu said:


> I don't have a problem calling that a polychord of A minor and G major


Hmm, I was under the impression that the notes comprising each of the two chords within a polychord had to be contiguous in pitch. So, an Amin-Gmaj polychord would be voiced like A C E G B D. Is that incorrect?


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## Anthony (Feb 3, 2017)

Sebastianmu said:


> On a second thought, in my mind I'd usually think about aebcdg in quartal/quintal harmonic, yes. Only if the voicing would be ace bdg or something like that, were the constituting chords would show some sort of being treated as such, I would come to think about it as a polychord.
> 
> [EDIT: grammar ]


Okay, I think we're in agreement here.


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## Sebastianmu (Feb 3, 2017)

Anthony said:


> Okay, I think we're in agreement here.


It's also a weird voicing for a quartal/quintal chord, though.


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## Anthony (Feb 3, 2017)

Sebastianmu said:


> It's also a weird voicing for a quartal/quintal chord, though.


You may be right. A friend taught me a bunch of piano chord voicings years ago and I thought he referred to it as quintal (as opposed to quartal, for example). I also recall him saying that you could only form two of these in each scale (though maybe that only applies to major scales). I took notes; I'll check them tonight.


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## Sebastianmu (Feb 3, 2017)

Don't listen to me though, I'm not a real musician..


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## Anthony (Feb 3, 2017)

Sebastianmu said:


> Don't listen to me though, I'm not a real musician..


Nor am I.


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## Vik (Feb 3, 2017)

Anthony said:


> would you consider a quintal-voiced chord like A E B C G D a polychord?


I wouldn't. I would call it an Am11.


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## JohnG (Feb 3, 2017)

Vik said:


> I would call it an Am11



Me too, in isolation. Conceivably there could be another context in which it wouldn't be but...


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## Farkle (Feb 3, 2017)

Equal Interval System.


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## Flaneurette (Feb 3, 2017)

It sounds somewhat ominous... uncomfortable. Not something I would choose to do on purpose. If I didn't know any better, I would think it was a bad attempt at modulating. Somehow, it seems to work, but barely though...


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## Anthony (Feb 4, 2017)

Vik said:


> I wouldn't. I would call it an Am11.


I just checked my notes, and the chord I referred to is indeed an Amin11 (quintal voicing), not a polychord. I guess I remembered it as the latter because it was broken down into left- and right-hand parts. Cheers...


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## Vik (Feb 4, 2017)

JohnG said:


> Me too, in isolation. Conceivably there could be another context in which it wouldn't be but...


I agree that one has to look at the context to define a chord... for instance, Cm6 and Am7(bb) contains the same notes, and so does C+E+ and Ab+... and C dim/Eb dim/Gb dim and A dim etc. But most of the confusion I've seen re chord definitions comes from mixing up chords with voicings. How one voices a chord is often more important for the end result than which chord it actually is - but if a chord consists of the exact same notes as a minor 11 chord (1, b3, 5, b7, 9, 11), it usually is a minor 11 chord as well. 
And the most interesting chords either are hard to define as such - or that have this interesting ambiguity which makes them interesting. So in some rare cases, I think the best solution is to simply spell out the chord. eg by writing a large C (if C is the root) and eg #4, 5 and 9 on top of each other, in smaller print, and inside a large parenthesis.


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## fiestared (Feb 5, 2017)

dannydawiz said:


> At 1:10 something goes on in this part that I don't really understand. It's dissonant but in a good way and I'd like to emulate it but don't really know how to go about it.



I think this will please you.


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## nordicguy (Feb 5, 2017)

Thanks a lot for sharing!
This is seriously awesome!


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## dannydawiz (Feb 9, 2017)

I just wanted to say thank you to the suggestions from everyone in this thread. It would take forever to get back to all of you individually but I have found everyones advice to be IMMENSELY helpful. Jazz harmony isn't something that I'm very good at. I know my extensions and incorporate a little bit of modal harmony in my music but things like polychords, quartal harmony, and EIS I don't know a whole lot about. I'll work on that from now on since I now have an idea on where to look.


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## Deleted member 422019 (Feb 16, 2017)

dannydawiz said:


> Hey thanks a lot sebastian. I've always been aware of the existence of poly chords but I admit I've never really tried implementing them in any of my music consciously.
> 
> One thing I've always gotten confused about when it came to polychords is whats the difference between that and say just a normal extended chord?
> 
> For example if I get c major and play g major ontop of it ( C E G B D G) aren't I just playing a Cmaj9 chord?



Hi Danny,

Yes and no. It depends upon how you look at. When seen as two triads (a Gmaj over a Cmaj) rather than a C maj9, things begin to get really interesting when using chords that are not diatonically related. For example, in the opening movement of one of my symphonic movements I use a polychord, F-min over A-major, in the strings to create tension through the dissonance of the chords (those two chords are in what is known as a double-chromatic mediant relationship). A polychord can result from the vertical positions in 6 part counterpoint. In isolation, to the ear there is no difference between, say, a DminMajor9 and an A-major on top of a d-minor chord. But in actual practice, a composer can view these simultaneities as two separate triads and orchestrate accordingly. It's even possible to have a "pivot chord", say an e-minor triad, and above it the triads are moving from B-major, to A-major, to C-major. 

I hope this helps. Better yet, sit at the keyboard and test these out for yourself.

Jerry
www.jerrygerber.com


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## Rohann (Feb 16, 2017)

Not specific to your harmony but Adam Neely made a good video about this a while back that explains the general theory:


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