Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2015 March 20

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March 20

Songs that don't end on the tonic chord

Look at Talk:I Know Where I'm Going (song). There's a question that no one has answered for 8 years at the bottom of the talk page. Can anyone answer it?? Georgia guy (talk) 19:47, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, I cannot agree with "This ending of this melody does not make sense". Each verse ends on the dominant chord (V) which creates a tension, to be resolved in the first chord of the next verse. At the song's very ending the tension remains unresolved, and that instability (or openness) makes powerful sense to me! You will find a number of tunes where the verses or, especially, the chorus or the bridge will end on the dominant, leading to resolution in the first bar of the next segment (though they sometimes do add a final tonic chord at the very end, or they just fade out :-). Here is one forum where people suggest other songs which don't end on the tonic. ---Sluzzelin talk 11:00, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

There are many songs which don't end on the tonic. I read an article a few years ago which was analyzing pop songs for their musical quality, (I can no longer find it) and it noted in particular a Katy Perry song which did not end on the tonic; IIRC, the chord progression actually featured almost NO tonic chords, excepting a few chord inversions. Again (mostly from memory, I apologize, and will try to find the original article if I can later when I have more time) songs like this are written based on modes rather than based on chord progressions, and the article noted some very important musical reasons for such song structures. --Jayron32 16:34, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, there are many, especially when you include modal tunes, but even within western systems using tonal hierarchy and chord progressions, you can find this throughout their history. Similar examples are the Picardy third but also deceptive cadences. In most cases, one significant element is that of surprise (though of course these endings can become clichés in their own right) and perhaps these cadences also manage to create a distance to what you've been listening to for the past minutes; a variety of catharsis. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:12, 24 March 2015 (UTC)