https://www.quora.

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WHAT ARE THE MOST INTERESTING HARMONY CONCEPTS IN JAZZ FOR YOU?
Dylan DeFeo, Freelance Jazz Musician/Teacher
Answered Aug 24, 2017

Anything that hasn’t yet been done before! Anything that pushes the envelope and challenges
traditional convention. Things that make me turn my head and go WOAH. Unusual scales
against certain chords, unusual chords that give you new options to explore.
I’m a listener that likes to hear contrast- dissonance to consonance, darkness versus light,
minor versus major, fast versus slow. Any harmonic concepts that display a certain sense of
contrast I certainly enjoy.
Compositionally, though, as much as I like when certain chords imply certain concepts I find
that when the chords/basic harmony is fairly bare bones, it allows for the player to explore
more things. Take, for instance, Impressions by John Coltrane. A Dm7 to an Ebm7 are fairly
basic chords, but he uses those basic touchstones to explore a crazy amount of scalar ideas.
Keeping it simple, I feel, helps prime the imagination- like a clear canvas!

 What is negative harmony in music?

 What are the differences between classical harmony and jazz harmony?
 What are the best or most interesting blogs about Jazz and Jazz history?
 How was harmony in Mozart's music in comparison to jazz functional harmony?
 Where can I learn more about jazz harmony?

Ethan Hein, Composer, teacher, all around music dork

Answered Aug 22, 2017 · Author has 3.5k answers and 8.3m answer views
The most interesting harmony concept in jazz is the blues. We take it for granted, but the
blues makes absolutely no sense when you analyze it in terms of Western tonal theory.
Let’s take a bunch of dominant seventh chords, not resolve them, and then play the minor
third and flat fifth over them! And then develop our melody lines while completely ignoring the
underlying changes! I’ve never seen a jazz theory book try to explain how or why the blues
works; they usually just say, um, this sounds good, you should do it.
And yet, the blues doesn’t sound strange or far out; it sounds perfectly fine.
It sounds so good, in fact, that it has made me question whether Western tonality really is all
that fundamental or natural.

Patrick McKenzie, Freelance Trumpet player at Self-Employment (1984-present)

Answered Aug 28, 2017 · Author has 247 answers and 68.2k answer views
I've always enjoyed taking a simple tune and re harmonizing the melody.
The late Dr. Billy Taylor was great at doing this and he would use nursery rhymes to prove his
point. If you have some music theory training, try using variations on the dominate chords.
For example, let's say that on the 4th measure of a song, on beat one, the chord is G7 from
the key of C major. You could use a 5 of 5 to make it sound interesting so that would be D7
because it is the 5th scale degree of G7. Or you could go up a half step and use Ab7 or use a
tritone sub and use Db7 of G7. It is also the flat 2nd in the key of C major. Half steps or semi-
tones have a strong pull to resolve and this is very nice sounding in Jazz music.
Another example is changing the mood or emotional content of a song.
For example, the use of minor chords adds another flavor to a song too!
But if you do not possess this type of theory (Jazz harmony), then your ears are your best
friends and they will guide you in the right direction so experiment and play!
You'd be amazed at what you come up with! Good luck.

Christina Naylor, studies Engineering Technology (2020)

Answered Aug 21, 2017
Negative harmony for sure!
I definitely don’t have enough knowledge to fully explain the concept, but Jacob Collier
basically popularized the idea and covers negative harmony excellently in these four videos:
https://youtu.be/DnBr070vcNE
https://youtu.be/b78NoobJNEo
https://youtu.be/H3mBFACpK0o
https://youtu.be/e2nUoq3AqjA

David Kane, Professional film and TV composer, 1981-2011

Answered Jan 19, 2018
Jazz harmony is not really separate from Harmony in general but exists as a somewhat
specialized subset. The development of jazz has been partially informed by a steady
assimilation of harmony as practiced by Classical composers. To cite a few examples; pianist
Bill Evans (and arguably even Bix Beiderbecke) introduced elements of impressionism into
jazz; McCoy Tyner exploited harmonies in 4th and 5ths demonstrating an affinity to the music
of Hindemith and this process continues. For example, as a Jazz pianist, I’m interested in the
pandiatonicism as practiced by Stravinsky (i.e. “Apollo”) and Eric Whitacre. I’m also attracted
by the extended tonality practiced by such composers as Britten and Tippet and I find myself
inspired by the omnivorous tonal/atonal musical language of Thomas Ades. These are just my
personal tastes- there is plenty of inspiration to be found throughout the musical world and
different players will take different influences and create something new with it.
Someone like Brad Mehldau is currently assimilating the language of the Romantic era and
creating something brand-new in the process.
The good news is that there is plenty of harmonic inspiration to go around.
Finally, I did want to point out that the concept mentioned by another respondent, Negative
Harmony, is not a discovery of Jacob Collier but was taught by Joseph Schillinger way back in
the 40’s and 50’s- demonstrating that even old ideas can find new life in the frisson that exists
between the creativity of jazz musicians and elements of other musics and concepts.