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.
It is extremely common in African music, Asian music, and European music, including:
- 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:
Double tonic patterns may be classified as beginning on the lower or upper note and may repeat open endedly, though they are often closed through a tonic close, as in :
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.