Double tonic

A double tonic is a chord progression,

melodic motion, or shift of level consisting
of a, "regular back-and-forth motion," in
melody similar to Bruno Nettl's pendulum
type though it uses small intervals, most
often a whole tone though may be almost
a semitone to a minor third (see pendular
thirds).[1]
"Donald MacGillavry"[2] Play (help·info): double tonic
a whole tone apart, on the upper note (A).

It is extremely common in African music

("Mkwaze mmodzi"), Asian music, and
European music, including:[3]

European Middle Ages music such as

"Sumer is Icumen in"
Elizabethan popular music such as "The
Woods so Wild" and "Dargason"
Classical music featuring the regular
alternation of tonic-dominant
 alternating 'discords' such as in Debussy
or Stravinsky
Gustav Mahler has also used this kind of
musical pendulum motion
"Scottish" and European music such as
"Donald MacGillavry"
sea shanties and other work songs such
as "Drunken Sailor", "Roun' de Corn,
Sally", and "Shallow Brown", and in
football chants such as:

"Chel-sea" football crowd chant:[1] minor third.

In American music, a rare example of a
double-tonic is the spiritual "Rock my Soul"
though American popular music began to
use the double tonic commonly in the last
half of the 1900s,[3] including Beck's
"Puttin It Down".[4]

Double tonic patterns may be classified as

beginning on the lower ("Sumer is Icumen
in", "The Woods so Wild", "The Irish
Washerwoman") or upper (most Scottish
tunes, passamezzo antico, "Roun' de Corn,
Sally", "Shallow Brown", "Mkwaze
mmodzi") note and may repeat open
endedly, though they are often closed
through a tonic close, as in :[5]
 Am|G|Am-G|Am||

They are also often varied through a binary

scheme ending on the dominant then
tonic, as in:

Am|G|Am|E|| Am|G|Am-G|Am||

or,

Am|G|Am|E|| Am|G|Am-E|Am||

A variation of this last progression is the

passamezzo antico.[5]
See also
Co-tonic
Secondary tonic
Supertonic
Subtonic
Level (music)

Sources
1. van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of
the Popular Style: The Antecedents of
Twentieth-Century Popular Music, p.205.
Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-
316121-4.
2. van der Merwe (1989), p.208.
3. van der Merwe (1989), p.206
4. "Beck - Puttin It Down tab ",
GuitareTab.com.
5. van der Merwe (1989), p.207

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Last edited 2 years ago by Magic lin…

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