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All talk of negative harmony, such as What is the correct process for deriving the 'mirror' or 'negative' harmony of a progression? deals with transposing the chords according to the rules of negative harmony.

Does this mean that the melody also needs to be transposed to its negative harmony equivalent? I can see a lot of minor seconds if I don't but perhaps that is part of negative harmony's charm?

empty
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  • kind of related https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/84709/are-there-any-typical-practical-applications-of-negative-harmony – Michael Curtis Jul 24 '19 at 20:46

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Melody is part of the harmony so I would expect it to be part of the 'negative' harmony.

A simple example...

enter image description here

So first we get the tonic inverted to a minor subdominant and the dominant inverts to a minor subdominant.

The interesting thing regarding melody is that the treble and bass parts switch roles.

I suppose if you wanted the original melody part to remain in the treble, you could transpose it into the octave above all the other voices.

At least by this example, melodically the ascending major line DO RE MI in the negative becomes the descending minor line SOL FA ME.

Michael Curtis
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  • I was wondering about that as well. Major to minor, plagal to plagal, ascending to descending. All rules of negative harmony? – empty Jul 24 '19 at 22:03
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    Is the whole negative harmony thing more than a YouTube hype? And was it devised as an analytic tool or as a composition method? – Your Uncle Bob Jul 24 '19 at 22:18
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    I think the deep dive is to read about _harmonic dualism_, see this post: https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/56346/. Personally, I've not taken the dive. I'm only applying what I've read in encyclopedia type summaries. – Michael Curtis Jul 25 '19 at 13:09