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The tonic chord is the "1" chord, the root, the chord C in the secret of C. Almost every song will use the tonic chord in its chord progressions, it is probably the most important chord of the secret. Nevertheless, some tunes will actually handle to go there entire period without ever fixing to the tonic chord.
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This video was modified by David Hartley. Check out his YouTube channel here:.
ASSISTANCE ME ON PATREON:.
0:00 What is the tonic chord?
0:39 Jane States by Jane's Dependency.
2:11 IV – V vamp.
3:11 Dreams by Fleetwood Mac.
4:03 One More Time by Daft Punk.
4:46 Vulfpeck.
5:47 Drake.
7:00 Sponsor.
8:01 R&B chord loop songs.
9:28 Simply Red & Modal uncertainty.
13:12 Patreon.
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how do you comment on something before it was uploaded
@jan Aju Simi the video wasn’t “uploaded” a few minutes ago, it was “published” a few minutes ago. All YouTubers tend to upload there videos days, if not weeks in advance but privately and then when they hit “publish” it enters your subscription box 🙂🙂
I assume no Beatles songs are examples, but are there any long segments like this? What examples?
I assume no Beatles songs are examples, but are there any long segments like this? What examples?
@David Bennett PianoOk kid!!!!!!
Excellent video and discussion David (although to me, “Holding Back the Years” is definitely in A Minor, as the D melody note is too ‘uplifting’ rather than ‘resolving’ compared to that A example). Cheers
It sounds to me like it’s in a major key, but it doesn’t resolve.
@Laura Unterweger Yes.. sounds like C major to me with no resolution. ii-V, which is very similar to the earlier examples of IV-V
Why Bb instead of Gm for the Wulfpeck song??
Beautiful to play on acoustic 🥰
Thanks David! My new goal is to write the most complex song I can without ever hitting that tonic.
I plan to write a such a song about gin
@ZZZaphodheheh good one
@ZZZaphodNice kkkkkkk
Seems like it’d be pretty easy, IV, V , vi, V progression would work well
@Brevort IV, V, vi, V might not be sufficient if they are going for the most complex song.
Or one could write an obnoxiously repetitive song that avoids the I chord. For example in C major, first bar is the descending melody C B A G F E B C over an F major chord, the 2nd bar is the descending melody B A G F E D B C over a G major chord, and those 2 bars are repeated over and over again until the song ends 24 minutes later.
Great video David. Btw I really think you should translate every chord progressions in roman numeral. For the One More Time example it would have been really helpful for me because I don’t know every key I only refer to the degrees 🙂
One thing I like about your videos is that it inspires me to try making some music with what I learned.
I think that ‘Frou-frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires’ by Cocteau Twins is an example of this. Although the song starts on D minor, I think the song is really in F major, certainly the chorus is in F major, but at no point in the song does it ever resolve to a F major chord. I suppose you could say that it’s a song that switches between the relative major/minor, so doesn’t count – because we do get D minor chords in the verses – but to me it’s a song in F major that never resolves to the tonic. Cocteau Twins are great, I recommend anyone to check them out if you’re not familiar with them.
Cocteau Twins are fantastic!
top10 band. n that’s their best song
I’ve always wondered if you’d make a video about this, since I didn’t know whether it was actually possible to have no tonic chord. It was interesting to see so many examples
It was one of those music theory questions that I knew should be possible but couldn’t actually name any examples until I did the research for this video 😊
@David Bennett PianoExcuse me if I missed this, but are there two different ways to define key, one using notes and one using feel, so that Jane says would be in the key of D note wise but A mixolydian feel-wise? To my ear, the A chord feels like home in Jane says.
@Reprehensible Meshuggah well, as I mention near the end of this video, songs based on short looping chord progressions have a tendency to have a “modal ambiguity”, so that will be why you hear the same song as me but hearing A as the tonic rather than D like me 😊
@David Bennett PianoRight. Thanks!
@Reprehensible Meshuggah ‘home’ is a state of mind
Other chords share so many tones of the tonic that it satisfies the ear without being tonic, as well.
You mean like tonic function, iii or vi?
In the video’s examples there’s even IV9
@Reprehensible Meshuggah yes, and also extended harmonies contain tonic notes.
“Ennemy” by Imagine Dragon (the music from Arcane) is also a great exemple of that, staying on the VIth and Vth forever in B minor
Saw enemy mentioned a few time so decided to poke at it and Gb in phrygian dominant feels like it fits perfectly as the tonic or home as i see it. 2nd and 1st chords in that harmonic mode.
@Kevin Becker Not sure about this mate, the melody kinda screams of B minor
😮 I didn’t know songs could actually omit the tonic chord completely. I’ve so much to learn 😭
The part where you said the key isn’t based on the chords you use. Rather, it’s the notes used in the melody. This was a lightbulb moment for me. Thanks !
It’s the totality of the harmonic structure, which includes the melody. Thinking of melody and harmony as different things is misleading. As is the suggestion that the part of that harmonic structure that one perceives as the melody can necessarily tell you, in isolation, what key a piece of music is in. As David demonstrated, it is possible to write a song that will be widely perceived as being in a given key while never once playing the tonic chord, but (crucially), it is ALSO possible to write a song that will be widely perceived as being in a given key, with a melody that never once plays the tonic NOTE.
I would highlight prelude in E minor by Chopin as the piece avoids the tonic chord until the very end, and it’s a really simple and useful way for every listener who doesn’t know a lot about music to understand the concept of resolution
Isn’t the first chord of the piece an E minor in inversion?
Specifically, the E minor chord with E in the melody. Em comes up a few times throughout the piece, but usually with a B in either the bass or the melody.
@Filip Yes a second inversion.
Listening to a recent Rick Beato interview of Jimmy Webb he asks a question about Wichita Lineman, Jimmy leaves the issue for a while and goes on with an anecdote. He refers to a phone call he received from James Taylor who’d like to cover this song (which he now has done) and loves but… can’t get his head around the fact that this song is in F. He asks “where’s is it?”, and Webb answers “it’s not there!”.
1:26 Hooold up – the harmony (chords) absolutely define the key. But if you only look at songs in terms of major (Ionian) or minor (Aeolian) melody rather than harmonic mode, you’re going to have a hard time working out the tonal center.
For example:
“Jane Says” seems to be in A Mixolydian. Even the melody hangs on the A for the beginning of the song, when the key is typically established, only dropping down at “…but if.” This also makes what was the V into the I, and so the progression becomes VII-I.
To me, Dreams is in G Mixolydian, and it’s also a VII-I progression. That makes the bridge start with ii-I-VII.
One More time seems to be in G Lydian, which would make the harmony I-II x3 then vii-II.
5:11 Okay, Smile Meditation is just clearly in E flat major. I-V-I-V-IV
Seems like God’s Plan is b♭m7 (i) cm7 (ii), which would make it B flat Dorian.
I was going to post this exact thing.
That’s how I’m thinking too…these are songs in Mixo and Lydian
no man, the melody of Dreams is clearly in A – look at how the phrases both end on by dropping down a 4th to A! The first note in the bridge is also just an A an octave higher – go and listen to that line again and see how complete the phrase sounds once the euphonium comes to rest on that A.
@StanleyDevastating It might sound that way to you, but that’s not what makes theory useful. The real test is whether we can combine that analysis with theory to get what we’d expect based on theory.
#1: If the tonic *really* is A min, then playing that chord under the melody should give a greater sense of resolution than what the song gives us. But playing the A min chord with the song makes it sound more dissonant, less resolved, because the notes in the minor chord are too close to where the melody sits, making it sound dissonant. Same with the the supposed dominant chord of A minor, which is E.
#2: If we treat it as F Lydian or G Mixolydian and translate it to F or G Phrygian, it sounds much darker. According to theory, that’s what should happen. Pro tip: if you’re not in the mood to write the song you want to, just use the mode that matches your current mood and change the mode later. It’s great!
#3: If we treat it as A Minor there isn’t many places we can go that make sense with the song. That leaves us with modes that *should* be *brighter* than minor. Sooo:
> A Phrygian isn’t much different from A Min, so not much changes.
> A Locrian sounds fine right up to the line “it’s only right that you should play the way you feel it,” where the melody and harmony start openly fighting each other. 🤣
> Changing to A Major makes it sound *darker,* and a little weird on account of the diminished 7, and A Dorian has the same problem with the diminished 6 chord.
> Finally, playing it in A Lydian and A Mixolydian sound darker, when they should be *brighter.*
These are all pretty good indications that there’s something wrong with the analysis.
#4: We can try approaching it from the perspective of other modes.
Calling it C Major would make it a IV-V progression, so we’d be going back and forth between dominant and subdominant instead of saying we’re going between submediant and leading tone. Moreover, converting it from C Major to C Minor actually makes it sound like it’s in C Minor! If I had to guess, it’s probably on account of the major chords becoming minor chords and the major melody becoming minor.
But if someone can explain how it makes sense to call it A Minor when actually using theory based on that assumption makes the theory useless, I’d love to hear it!
@StanleyDevastating The melody is clearly from the A minor scale, a lot of it pentatonic.
“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” is a notable song that never resolves to the tonic chord. For example, the Marvin Gaye / Tammi Terrill version draws from chords in D major but never actually comes to that chord. The closest it gets is the beginning of the verses that start with a I chord, but with the 6th added and the 5th (A) in the bass. It’s ambiguous enough to feel like it’s simultaneously in the relative minor (B minor).
After the verses, the bridge ends with chords that sound like they are headed to the tonic, but then that V chord goes up a half step for a key change, and leads to a deceptive cadence with the new I chord (Eb major) but with the added 6th and the 5th in the bass.
Actually, there are some live versions by Ashford and Simpson (who wrote the song) that resolve at the very end to the I chord!
I was hoping someone would point this song out. It’s one of my favorite pieces of music trivia.
505 by Arctic Monkeys is a great example of a minor iv v vamp! Although some people say it’s in D dorian, I always felt like A is the root in this case
“This Must Be the Place” by the Talking Heads is also a song that avoids the tonic, it vamps from D to Em to C to Em (V-vi-IV-V) for the whole song, but the melody confirms that it’s in G major
Edit: forgot to mention the artist lol
I’ve always interpreted those “IV, V” loop songs as “bVII, I” in Mixolydian. The scale is the same.
But Anyway by Blues Traveler is an example.
But the scale is ALSO the same for six other modes of the major scale, each with a different tonic, so the fact that it draws all its notes from that scale tells you nothing about which one of the seven modes it’s in. Only your ears can tell you that. Does the chord David interprets as the “V” chord really sound at rest to you? Does it really feel like you’re back home and everything’s resolved when you arrive there? Does the music actually seem MORE resolved than it would if it hypothetically then proceeded to the chord David interprets as the (never heard) tonic chord? If it really does, to you, then for you it IS in mixolydian. It’s ultimately subjective.
I’m much more comfortable with the later part of your analysis, where you suggest that a piece might be modal or in a space of modal ambiguity rather than having no tonic. Maybe it’s because I listen to a lot of music where the melody isn’t the defining factor, but I tend to feel that the key a tune is in isn’t defined by the melody but by the bassline. If the bass feels at rest in a certain place, that feels much more like the foundation of the piece, even if the melody doesn’t rest there and it implies a mode other than major or minor.
I am surprised and impressed that you found so many examples. Well done, David! Thus must have taken a tremendous amount of research.