Avoiding the Tonic: the Never-Ending Progression

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If you want to know what key a song is in, you need to look at the entire list of chords used, and find the one key that uses all, or at least most, of them. That will get you close, and then you look at melodic structure, which will usually keep coming back to a single important note – the tonic note. Often, it’s the note at the end of the final phrase of the chorus. Songs represent a musical journey that usually take us away from and back to the tonic note and chord. But you can create really interesting songs that keep circling around, never reaching the tonic. The benefit of the “never-ending progression” is that it generates forward motion that keeps listeners listening.

For a quick, good example of what I’m describing here, check out the chorus Lou Christie’s 1966 hit, “Lightnin’ Strikes“. Much of the song is in C major. The chorus leaps abruptly into Eb major, but without giving us the Eb tonic chord. Instead, we get this progression that repeats: Fm7  Gm7  C (ii7  iii7  V/ii, for the theorists in the crowd.)

“Lightnin’ Strikes” displays an important feature of a good never-ending progression: the last chord usually begs for the first chord. In this case, it does it through use of a secondary dominant chord (V/ii, the C chord).

The avoiding of the tonic chord doesn’t frustrate us. It simply keeps us listening, waiting for it.

There are some important things to consider when building a chord progression that keeps circling but never “ends”:

1. Avoiding the tonic chord means that the last chord of your progression needs to connect smoothly to the first chord. I’ve put some suggestions at the end of this post.
2. The never-ending progression works well in a chorus because verses usually need to lead into choruses. So the end of a verse needs to resolve to the first chord of the chorus.
3. Even though it circles endlessly, the never-ending progression provides harmonic strength because the “last” chord usually begs for the first chord.

You can end your song with a fade, or abruptly with the last chord.

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