In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches (tones, notes), or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic line, or the "horizontal" aspect.Counterpoint, which refers to the interweaving of melodic lines, and polyphony, which refers to the relationship of separate independent voices, are thus sometimes distinguished from harmony.
In popular and jazz harmony, chords are named by their root plus various terms and characters indicating their qualities. In many types of music, notably baroque, romantic, modern, and jazz, chords are often augmented with "tensions". A tension is an additional chord member that creates a relatively dissonant interval in relation to the bass. Typically, in the classical common practice period a dissonant chord (chord with tension) "resolves" to a consonant chord. Harmonization usually sounds pleasant to the ear when there is a balance between the consonant and dissonant sounds. In simple words, that occurs when there is a balance between "tense" and "relaxed" moments.
Harmony is the seventh album by American rock band Three Dog Night, released in 1971 (see 1971 in music). The album featured two Top 10 hits: a cover version of Paul Williams' "An Old Fashioned Love Song" (U.S. #4) and Hoyt Axton's "Never Been to Spain" (U.S. #5).
Harmony is a Java-based software for creating high-definition music videos with 2D and 3D animations. The application was developed by Digital Chaotics, a company based in San Jose, California and established in 2010 by Ken and Leanna Scott.
During a March 1, 2011 interview published by The LIST magazine, Ken explained how he initially got into music and digital entertainment. According to Scott: “I came at it from both the art and the technology side. … I built one of the first digital audio synthesizers as an undergrad project back in 1979. It was a short jump from there to creating visuals with computers, too.”
Taking inspiration from Fantasia – which Scott calls, “The greatest music video of all time” – he began writing software code for Harmony in late 2009, finishing the project in mid-2010. However, Scott has also said that the idea for Harmony began much earlier:
I read a book in 1978 called Digital Harmony, by John H Whitney, Sr. (Interestingly, he was the father of the president of Digital Productions.) He said that there was a kind of visual art based on motion, and proposed theories about the underlying mathematical structure of visual harmony. So there's the book, combined with my desire to create art with computers-add a taste or two of things commonly used by college students during the 70's - and lots of Pink Floyd. Add it all up, and the seeds for Harmony were planted. My friends in school and at Floating Point Systems listened to me ranting about "making music videos with computers" incessantly. I'm sure it was both maddening and fascinating to see.
Ekseption was a Dutch rock band active from 1967 to 1989, playing mostly-instrumental progressive rock and classical rock. The central character in the changing list of members, the only band member present on every album, was conservatory-trained trumpeter Rein van den Broek (10 September 1945 - 11 May 2015). The band knew some commercial success in the 1970s, having Dutch top ten hit singles with their adaptations of Beethoven's "Fifth" and Bach's (Celebrated) "Air." The second album, "Beggar Julia's time trip" (1969), won the Dutch Edison Award for album of the year, and the first five albums all went gold.
Ekseption grew out of the high-school band The Jokers, which van den Broek formed in 1958. They changed their name to The Incrowd (after the Ramsey Lewis song) before discovering that name was already taken. Finally they settled on the name Ekseption in 1967. The group played jazz, pop and R&B covers, but in 1969, shortly after keyboardist Rick van der Linden joined, they were impressed by a gig of The Nice, and van der Linden decided to concentrate on producing classical rock, modern re-interpretations of classical works for rock band. Most of their subsequent albums contain both original songs and re-interpreted classical pieces.