Yin and Yang: tonic and dominant

We live in a polarized reality. From birth we are aware of it: light and darkness, cold and heat, pleasure and pain, tension and relaxation, life and death, "good and evil" ... An item It gives rise to another; no one would be impossible to find its opposite and vice versa.

Music is no stranger to this, and its essence is ruled by two powerful opposing forces. When we compose we use to generate movement and balance. Rhythmically we find the emphasis being discussed, in general terms, between the strong and the weak to be discussed later. In this article we will work with another type of rhythm: the harmonic rhythm (rhythm or chord).

Although this is not unique, far from the tonal system will rely on it to talk about it and implement it.

Imagine the scale of C major chords and all consonants that are generated on each of his notes:

Dom, Rem, Mim, fam, SolM, Lam ... (The If I declined, because of their special characteristics, for now we will not use to not overextend the concept. Though of course, also part of the game and has its role) .

If I play one of those chords on a piano (I propose a piano, because it is a simple sound that does not generate movement itself) I will perceive a static feeling. At the time you play another chord I begin to perceive movement. Obviously I can move rhythmically repeating a single chord or breaking down their notes to create an arpeggio but not referring to a rhythmic movement, if not a harmonic movement, the movement that we perceive in harmony to change chords.

After playing the second chord feature a curiosity and is always one of them represented a role voltage and the other one of relaxation, no matter what chord interpreter. To a greater or lesser extent this will occur because that's the way we interpret the sensation of movement in harmony. As you changing chords one will be perceived more or less tension than the other, but never the same. As the line changes state will be more subtle or more powerful this feeling.

In tonal music (in all modes) the polar extremes are found between tonic and dominant. The trend represents the first degree of the scale (the note C in C major scale) and the dominant fifth grade (the note G in C major).

Tonic and dominant

When we touch a tonic chord perceive a feeling of rest or "stability"; when we played the dominant perceive its opposite. Just switch, for example, the C major and G major chords to perceive those feelings clearly.

Most songs you listen to the radio set containing at least these two tonal functions. Evidently they can (and do) songs without these functions are present. We could make an issue or part of it using only chords I and VI degree (eg major and minor, very similar to each other). The tension and relaxation not be as emphatic as between I and V degree but it perceive stability, depending on the context, in a chord rather than another.

The rest of chords formed from the notes of the scale will generate similar effects, although not in such a powerful way. It is as if they were "gray" shades, between the "black" and "white".

From here we could talk about a lot of the functions of tonic and dominant; I will talk about them and their origin in other articles. Now let's go straight to the practical part, we will start working on incorporating this into our language, realizing its character and its enormous power (either to use or to do without it in future projects).

I insisted on the introduction of the blog that learning a language is not useful if it is not put into practice. It is no use to learn vocabulary or grammar if they never use it when we talk in our conversations. How do we do it? Many composers agree that the limitations in producing them receiving orders stimulate their creativity, as they have to fit a specific template, duration and specific nature, etc., and be forced to work on a given subject or item. This is the approach I will use, providing a formula exercise where we use the item you have spoken, but with a number of limitations that will help us to know in detail and go controlling it.

For this first exercise I suggest making a composition used in harmony only the tonic chord and a dominant hue, any more. For example, the chord C major and G major. To the melody part of our topic (if any) we can use whatever we want, provided they do not generate chords other than these two.