Harmonic Magic Tricks

Advanced harmony only works when the style supports it. Dropping altered dominant language into cinematic writing often signals genre instead of emotion. I want to show you how I use neutral harmony to control audience expectation. We’ll look at how sus4 softens the leading tone and delays resolution without weakening tension, and why voicing matters more than the chord label. Space low, crunch high. I’ll show you the 13 trick, chromatic mediant movement, and modal borrowing in minor. Do not change the melody to justify new chords; reharmonization has to support the original melodic gravity. If every chord is dramatic, none of them are.

What I actually cover

• Why neutral harmony gives me more control
• How voicing changes what a chord actually says
• The 13 trick I use over tonic
• Moving through chromatic mediants without losing direction
• Reharmonizing around the melody instead of rewriting it