Avoiding the Tonic Note in Verse Melodies Creates Momentum

Avoiding use (or at least overuse) of the tonic note in verses is a natural energy builder for songs
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It’s an important songwriting principle that the energy at the end of a song should be as great or greater than the energy at the beginning. There are many ways to boost the energy level of a song. Some of those ways might be thought of as “artificial”, in the sense that you take what you’ve written and do something to your performance of it. For example, you can increase song energy by adding instruments as you go, or by having instruments play higher and louder. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. It gets the job done.

But there are energy builders that might be thought of as “natural”, in the sense that the very structure of your song builds energy. Natural energy builders are subtle and powerful at the same time. Natural energy builders include the following:

1. Having melodies rise in pitch as they move forward.
2. Having chord progressions strengthen (i.e., imply the tonic chord) once you reach the chorus.
3. Having lyrics become more emotional later rather than earlier in a song.
4. Having rhythms strengthen and become less syncopated and more beat-aligned in the chorus.

There’s at least one other structural element that is a natural way to build energy: avoid the overuse of the tonic pitch in the verse, and save it for the chorus.

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The term “tonic” is used to refer to the note and chord representing the key your song is in. So for a song in C major, the tonic note and chord is C. For a useful analogy, think of the tonic to mean “home.” In most songs, the tonic chord represents a starting and ending point for musical phrases and sections.

Carly Rae Jepsen’s hit song “Call Me Maybe” (written by Jepsen and Tavish Crowe) is a simple song that demonstrates this “avoiding the tonic” concept in action. Though the tonic chord is used often in the verse, the tonic note is used much less. And when it does appear, the tonic note is placed in places that doesn’t draw attention to itself.

But in the chorus, the tonic note makes much more of an appearance. It often features as the starting and/or ending note of phrases. That moving from rarely-used tonic to frequently-used tonic is a natural energy builder. That’s because when phrases move in and around the tonic without hitting it, listeners’ expectation that the tonic will arrive at some point is increased. In music, expectation generates energy.

The subtleness of this compositional technique means that though casual listeners won’t be able to pick it out or identify that it’s happening, natural energy builders are a vital part of successful music.

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Written by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website.
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