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Harmolodics is a musical philosophy and method of musical composition and improvisation developed by American jazz saxophonist-composer Ornette Coleman. His work following this philosophy during the late 1970s and 1980s inspired a style of forward-thinking jazz-funk known as harmolodic funk. It is associated with avant-garde jazz and free jazz, although its implications extend beyond these limits. Coleman also used the name "Harmolodic" for both his first website and his record label.
Harmolodics seeks to free musical compositions from any tonality center, allowing harmonic progression independent of traditional European notions of tension and release (see: atonality). Harmolodics may loosely be defined as an expression of music in which harmony, movement of sound, and melody all share the same value. The general effect is that music achieves an immediately open expression, without being constrained by tonal limitations, rhythmic pre-determination, or harmonic rules.
Ronald Radano suggests that Coleman's concepts of harmonic unison and harmolodics were influenced by Pierre Boulez's theory of aleatoric music while Gunther Schuller suggested that harmolodics is based on the superimposition of the same or similar phrases, thus creating polytonality and heterophony.Ronald M. Radano (1994). New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton's Cultural Critique, pp. 109, 109–110n97. .
Coleman had been preparing a book called The Harmolodic Theory since at least the 1970s, but this remains unpublished. The only other known explanation of harmolodics that was written by Coleman is a DownBeat article called "Prime Time for Harmolodics" (1983).
Proponents include James Blood Ulmer and Jamaaladeen Tacuma.Gioia, Ted (1990). The Imperfect Art: Reflections on Jazz and Modern Culture, p. 43. . Ulmer, who played and toured with Coleman during the 1970s, has adopted harmolodics and applied the theories to his approach to jazz and blues guitar (for example, Harmolodic Guitar with Strings).
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