An Insignificant — David Whyatt Composer

An Insignificant Non-Event On Land (2022)

This piece was performed on the 13th of October 2022 in the RGA at WAAPA, during the Dark Side Of The Moon Revisited gig. It was also played twice at lunchtime concerts the following week. A recording of one of those performances is attached.

This piece was written using ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’ as a reference track. I found a piano transcription of the piece and used that to create a version in negative harmony. While this is often very straightforward, since it can be formulaically done when a piece stays in the same key, that was not the case here. The piece starts in what could be either Bb or F (since there are a number of borrowed chords), then modulates definitively to Bb, then to F, then to B, then to F, Bb, F. Where these delineations are made affected the final harmony.

The algorithm to create the negative harmony, once key centres had been identified, was to flip notes around a point halfway between the tonic and the dominant. To determine the root, notes were flipped around the tonic of the original key. This works for all chords except the vii diminished, which was not in the piece.