Check out What You Need to Know Before you Learn Music Theory by Eric Fine: www.amazon.com/dp/B0BYRNBTKN 📖🎼🎶 📌SMALL CORRECTION: at 12:02 I mispoke. I meant to say "D mixolydian or G major" not "G mixolydian or D major". Sorry for any confusion caused.

One thing I like about your videos is that it inspires me to try making some music with what I learned.

I would highlight prelude in E minor by Chopin as the piece avoids the tonic chord until the very end, and it's a really simple and useful way for every listener who doesn't know a lot about music to understand the concept of resolution

Thanks David! My new goal is to write the most complex song I can without ever hitting that tonic.

I would interpret the majority of these songs as modal, rather than not having the tonic. Like you say, with short chord loops, it's very hard to decide on what's the root and therefore the tonic chord.

“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” is a notable song that never resolves to the tonic chord. For example, the Marvin Gaye / Tammi Terrill version draws from chords in D major but never actually comes to that chord. The closest it gets is the beginning of the verses that start with a I chord, but with the 6th added and the 5th (A) in the bass. It’s ambiguous enough to feel like it’s simultaneously in the relative minor (B minor). After the verses, the bridge ends with chords that sound like they are headed to the tonic, but then that V chord goes up a half step for a key change, and leads to a deceptive cadence with the new I chord (Eb major) but with the added 6th and the 5th in the bass. Actually, there are some live versions by Ashford and Simpson (who wrote the song) that resolve at the very end to the I chord!

I think that 'Frou-frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires' by Cocteau Twins is an example of this. Although the song starts on D minor, I think the song is really in F major, certainly the chorus is in F major, but at no point in the song does it ever resolve to a F major chord. I suppose you could say that it's a song that switches between the relative major/minor, so doesn't count - because we do get D minor chords in the verses - but to me it's a song in F major that never resolves to the tonic. Cocteau Twins are great, I recommend anyone to check them out if you're not familiar with them.

i always thought there was something really striking about "Dreams", specifically the part where that instrumental break begins. Now it makes sense!

I am surprised and impressed that you found so many examples. Well done, David! This must have taken a tremendous amount of research.

Other chords share so many tones of the tonic that it satisfies the ear without being tonic, as well.

Wichita Lineman is thought of as being in F, but it never lands on F, it's such an odd song, but so beautiful.

I’ve started to note this in a lot of the music I listen to, and it’s something I’ve been feeling a lot but never considered too much until this well timed video!

These songs are largely in Lydian, not Major, that’s why. It’s not IV to V, it’s I to II in Lydian. Your ear definitely starts to hear the first chord as I.

😂😂 By this point I'm convinced that I could just randomly play any notes and some music theory nerd could explain that it's actually some complex chords

Wow I remember you replying to my request for this video like a year ago, I guess patience is a virtue 😆

I've always wondered if you'd make a video about this, since I didn't know whether it was actually possible to have no tonic chord. It was interesting to see so many examples

Listening to a recent Rick Beato interview of Jimmy Webb he asks a question about Wichita Lineman, Jimmy leaves the issue for a while and goes on with an anecdote. He refers to a phone call he received from James Taylor who'd like to cover this song (which he now has done) and loves but... can't get his head around the fact that this song is in F. He asks "where's is it?", and Webb answers "it's not there!".

Rick Beato's amazing new interview w/Jimmy Webb cites 'Wichita Lineman' as being in F without an F chord. There is an Fsus4/A, so I'd have to check it again to see if that acts as a tonic. But their discussion indicates it doesn't ever really resolve to an F major.

Fantastic video David. Excellent analysis as ever

David I always learn so much with your videos! Thanks for that. I was listening Say it right from Nelly Furtado and I thing is a popular example of a song that never go to the tonic chord.

What a great topic. This is gonna be great!!

“This Must Be the Place” by the Talking Heads is also a song that avoids the tonic, it vamps from D to Em to C to Em (V-vi-IV-V) for the whole song, but the melody confirms that it’s in G major Edit: forgot to mention the artist lol

Nice video, well structured. I like that you build up from basic to more developped forms of the concept and then opening the reflexion with songs with questionable keys, very cool !

Fascinating stuff, especially the part about modal ambiguity. Thank you David!

I'd like to mention that when I heard one more time by daft punk, i couldn't help but think of Digital love in the same album. While it never actually reaches its tonic, it's in the key signature of A Major and A sounds like the tonic note in the lyrics.

Thanks for another extremely informative video, David.

Great video and ideas for future song chord progressions, thanks!

Love the outro music you created for this video, very Radiohead

"There's a place for us" by Phil Collins avoids Eb except for one brief pass through a Eb/G that does not feel like home, and only hits a root Eb to end. This is perfect for the song, as it's about not being able to find a place to rest, and the last chord is like a sigh of relief.

Great video - I've meant to research this in the past to see if I can find many songs that do this!

Your videos are very inspiring. Thank you fot this great job!

It seems like Jane's Said might be more descriptively labelled G Lydian. Sure, the notes are the same as D major, but this song emits strong Lydian vibes to me rather than D major. I hear you about the melody resolution. This is similar to the argument Adam Neely makes about Sweet Home Alabama. Then again, there are no mathematically provable answers in music theory.

I think the reason you get this a lot on hip-hop and daft punk is the use of sampling - producers will chop up a section of the song and loop it without the full chord progression

i looooove your videos. the staff notation of pop songs is so good.

You never fail to introduce new awesome music to me. David Benett is my curator!

"Against All Odds" by Phil Collins has tonic chords in root position only 3 times, and even then they have a 6th or 9th added, giving the whole tune a restless feel. "Are they going to resolve that ii-V progression or not?" "Oh, it's a I chord, but it's in 2nd inversion!"

😮 I didn’t know songs could actually omit the tonic chord completely. I’ve so much to learn 😭

The outro song is beautiful ✨

Very interesting and helpful. I also ordered the book!

It never occurred to me that Jane Says was IV-V, I always thought of it as I-II but looking at it now the melody is clearly in D. I love how the same chords can be interpreted so differently

A song worth mentioning here is Wichita Lineman. Except for the intro, the song never goes to the Tonic again. When I play it live, I omit the intro and change it from Tonic then Dominant to Sub Dominant then Dominant (borrowed from the "Is still on the line" section) because I'm setting up my looper. In Jimmy Webb's interview with Rick Beato, he stated that his song never goes to 1, but he must've forgotten about the intro :)

Super content you make. Keep it up!

Brillant, perfectly explained to me

Carousels by Beirut is another song in the key of D major that spends its entire length only ever playing Gmaj7 and A chords, which for me always felt as if the tonic served as the song's center with the chords perpetually dancing around it, like an actual carousel. it was the first song i thought of when i saw this video's thumbnail so it was very interesting to see more like it

The Simply Red song, the D feels like a IV, especially with the way he approaches it in the eponymous passage.

This is why Daft Punk's own mashups of "One More Time" and "Aerodynamic" work so well. "Aerodynamic" is in Bm, with the tonic on bar one, so the "One More Time" vocal layered on top evokes a dramatically different vibe while still being in key.

I love your channel. Unfortunately I'm not a musician, but I listen to a lot of music and sometimes I try to produce something in DAW. I also love the abstract and theoretical sides of things so I always enjoy your content. I was thinking lately that there seems to be lack of extreme metal analysis on youtube. I recently found this band that combines extreme metal with jazz - Imperial Triumphant, I couldn't find any materials analyzing their music. The most interesting albums seem to be the last two. They also made radiohead cover 😜 Is there a chance that you will ever make videos on more extreme types of metal? Now that I'm writing this comment I also thought of Godspeed You Black Emperor. They are a post rock group. It would also be nice to see you analyzing this style of composing with long songs and multiple layers of instruments and sounds. Thanks for all the work you do :)

505 by Arctic Monkeys is a great example of a minor iv v vamp! Although some people say it's in D dorian, I always felt like A is the root in this case

“Leave the City” by Twenty One Pilots is an example of a song that almost never hits the tonic - we only get it once, and it’s only at the very end of the song. Despite being in the key of G (and quite clearly so because of the melody), it only hits G at the end, looping for the vast majority of the song on the chords C, Em, D, and Bm, the IV, vi, V, and iii of the scale.

I typed in British piano music theory guy and found you You are incredible and the amounts of transcribing by yours

I found this video because I was listening to Parker's Band by Steely Dan and realized it never resolved, and I wanted to learn about more examples. Thanks!

The part where you said the key isn't based on the chords you use. Rather, it's the notes used in the melody. This was a lightbulb moment for me. Thanks !

Great video as always David. Although i must say i felt a bit lost on some of the examples when you only used the chord names and didnt include the roman numerals.

This song is in D major but never features the tonic chord. The only chord are Em7, F#m7 and B7. The reason I say it’s D major and not E minor (or Dorian) is because the melody is clearly a “D major melody”. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ZtZkpbKE0JOZk2Q.htmlsi=X_1f8Sinka4-9Ix2

I’m getting Gary Numan’s song, “Me I Disconnect From You “ here. It’s a pretty similar set up to Dreams, but even though there is a C major chord passage in it, it doesn’t really sound like the tonic, because every time you feel the song should land on C, Gary shunts up to a D major chord. Similarly, a song like Down In The Park sounds like it might be in C, but hang on there’s a Bb and now an A major. But there’s no way you could say it’s in D minor either. The key centre seems to drift all over the place.

Run Away With Me by Carly Rae Jepsen is (as far as I remember) a perfect example of this, as well as being an all round stunning song. Beautiful sax intro as well.

Only in Dreams, by Weezer. Beautiful song that would deserve more recognition even I were/am wrong.

I have that book from the promo! It's amazing! It's the best thing I've done for myself all year.

yesssss you finally mentioned Vulfpeck!!!

Excellent video and discussion David (although to me, "Holding Back the Years" is definitely in A Minor, as the D melody note is too 'uplifting' rather than 'resolving' compared to that A example). Cheers

As soon as I heard the first chord progression, I thought of "Dreams" 😄

I love your content.

OooooEE, thanks for introducing me to Vulfpeck, that was sweet as hell.

I’m much more comfortable with the later part of your analysis, where you suggest that a piece might be modal or in a space of modal ambiguity rather than having no tonic. Maybe it’s because I listen to a lot of music where the melody isn’t the defining factor, but I tend to feel that the key a tune is in isn’t defined by the melody but by the bassline. If the bass feels at rest in a certain place, that feels much more like the foundation of the piece, even if the melody doesn’t rest there and it implies a mode other than major or minor.

Jimmy Webb told Rick Beato, if I recall correctly, that Wichita Lineman is in the key of F but never plays an F.

Wolf Alice - How Can I Make it Ok Another tune that just goes from IV to V over and over, building and building beautifully!

Yay, this is the exact topic I have been asking in the comment section of several videos. I don't know if my comments inspired you to do this, but thanks anyway.

I think Holding Back The Years is in A minor. The D note just sounded like a 4th to me

1. Does "God Only Knows" fit in this case? I always think of that song in terms of a song with a complex and ambiguous chord progression. 2. I slightly disagree that songs without a tonic are extremely rare because in the last 10 years or so it seems that they have gotten considerably more common as songs based on chord loops have gotten more and more common in popular music, especially ones where creating a "chill vibe" is the overall goal, which more and more popular music is trying to do since more people just listen to music "for the vibes" anyway.

Turns out that when you write songs by trial-and-error using only guitar chord symbols or the auto-chord tool in a piano roll editor, what comes out usually breaks simple music theory conventions.

I often say these tunes are lydian mode as well: ). I go with the phrase “suspended animation” good stuff Dave: )

woah, no beatles or radiohead songs?

"Ennemy" by Imagine Dragon (the music from Arcane) is also a great exemple of that, staying on the VIth and Vth forever in B minor

Thanks! An alternative way to talk about modes: Songs that avoid tonic chord or start from other chord than the tonic.

Very cool, I never thought of that....

I've always interpreted those "IV, V" loop songs as "bVII, I" in Mixolydian. The scale is the same. But Anyway by Blues Traveler is an example.

A point David didn’t raise but which I suspect is key here is the ORDER in which the chords make their first appearance in a given song. If a song we’ve never heard begins with a simple triad (or an otherwise relatively stable chord, like a major 7) our brains automatically tonicise the root note of that chord - it becomes the default tonic until such time as new information contradicts that impression. If there is a readily accessible way for us to perceive the second chord as being consistent with the first being the tonic, our first impression is confirmed and validated and by that point we are probably locked into that first chord being the tonic, regardless of what happens next. But if the second chord problematises that impression, we have to reevaluate. A two-chord song that utilizes only Fmajor and Gmajor, for example, will likely fall into this camp, and the order may be the key factor that decides whether those same two chords are typically experienced as being IV and V in the ionic mode or VII and I in the Mixolydian mode. If the song BEGINS with the G major chord, then G is automatically the default tonic and ionic is (probably) the default mode (because of its cultural ubiquity over other “major” modes). But the F that follows problematises that - it’s now definitely not in G Ionic. Our brain calculates the relationship between the second chord and our default tonic chord, cross references it to other times we have heard that same movement, and seeks an explanation that allows us to retain that first chord as the tonic if at all possible. And if we are a 21st century person who has spent their entire life listening to blues-influenced pop music (ie all pop music), we are likely to latch onto the Mixolydian mode and see that second chord as a flat 7. If, on the other hand (and as is the case with the songs presented here), the order is reversed and the F comes first, something entirely different happens. Now the F is experienced, in the first instance, as the default tonic. But that impression is immediately confounded by the arrival of the G, and in a way that is not as readily reconcilable as it was the other way round. If Lydian was as common and stable as Mixolydian, our brains would probably conclude at this point that we were in Lydian, so as to retain our default tonic of F. But Lydian is inherently unstable (probably, at least in part, simply because it is relatively unfamiliar, at least to western ears) so, instead, we cross reference that movement from one major chord to another a tone above it, subconsciously recognise the harmonic context in which we’ve heard that movement the most often in our lives (which is the movement from IV to V before resolving to I - the single most classic and common cadence in western music for at least the last half millennium), and instantly are already anticipating the C major chord that would resolve it. Only the C chord never arrives, leaving us in perpetual anticipation of a home we never reach. We see this exact same phenomenon at play in the two versions of the “Axis of Awesome” chord sequence, namely I/V/VI/IV and i/VI/III/VII - the same exact chords, looped in precisely the same order, the only difference is which one we perceive as being the beginning, which switches the tonality of the whole thing from ionic to aeolian. Probably everyone has at some point had the discombobulating experience of hearing a song they know distantly playing, but because they weren’t concentrating they “mishear” where the “one” is and so suddenly the song is transformed (until their brains figure it out and switch back) into an entirely different piece of music that isn’t even in the same key.

Thank you.

Wow I must be learning something I thought of “ Dreams “ & then you said it 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽😁😁🎵

Surprised Wichita Lineman was missed off the video. This is one of the earliest and most famous pop song examples. The song never resolves to F.

A song without a Tonic is probably in a Mode, and uses the Mode's Tonic chord. This is likely the case on most songs that alternate between two adjacent chords.

Amazing. David Bennett analyses Jane's Addiction! My favourite band.

Another excellent video! One of my favorite fairly recent songs is How Can I Make It Okay by Wolf Alice. Would you say that it is one of the songs that avoids the tonic chord?

There are a lot of songs with two chords one semitone apart that could fit into this category (e.g. Montero by Lil Nas X, Get into it (yuh) by Doja Cat, Enemy by Imagine Dragons) that I tend to hear as V-VI chords in aeolian, but others say they're I-II chords in phygrian dominant.

I'm not 100% certain, but I always feel like 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight' by Elton John never sounds as though it resolves fully. I know it uses a lot of unusual inversions.

So amazing

I would love to hear an entire video on more songs with modal ambiguity!

1:26 Hooold up - the harmony (chords) absolutely define the key. But if you only look at songs in terms of major (Ionian) or minor (Aeolian) melody rather than harmonic mode, you're going to have a hard time working out the tonal center. For example: "Jane Says" seems to be in A Mixolydian. Even the melody hangs on the A for the beginning of the song, when the key is typically established, only dropping down at "...but if." This also makes what was the V into the I, and so the progression becomes VII-I. To me, Dreams is in G Mixolydian, and it's also a VII-I progression. That makes the bridge start with ii-I-VII. One More time seems to be in G Lydian, which would make the harmony I-II x3 then vii-II. 5:11 Okay, Smile Meditation is just clearly in E flat major. I-V-I-V-IV Seems like God's Plan is b♭m7 (i) cm7 (ii), which would make it B flat Dorian.

I've heard "Bizarre Love Triangle" and "Crush" that also seem to float around the tonic chord :)

Interesting topic and well-done video! Glad you mentioned that what key the song is in can be ambiguous. I wonder if that's the case for some of the other songs you mentioned. In general I find those songs that loop between IV and V a bit annoying, but maybe that's just me!

I'm sure Drake doesnt have any idea about this fact about his songs 😂

Proving that Drake actually doesn't make music, but rather just talks in a fairly monotone voice. And people like his "sound".

For me, Holding Back the Years is definitely in D doric since I feel that the reason that that A in the melody sounds resolved is because it anticipates the Dm9 which comes right after

Let Me Be Your Fantasy (Baby D) is a good example. It's a four chord loop of (I think) vi V iii IV. You could hear it as being in the minor key of the vi chord but the melody is more in the major key. Gives the song its restless, nervy sound.

Mate. I love your work but put a content warning on Chris Brown next time, okay?

I find those songs extremely irritating. Yucko.

Reggae artists use these kinds of chord progressions often. The Grateful Dead use it for Fire On the Mountain. I always thought of it as a modal progression. A nice way going from the lydian and mixolydian modes.

Hi David! Thanks for this great video, I enjoy your videos a lot. Isn't Radiohead's Weird Fishes / Arpeggi in the key of D but never uses that chord??? Probably I am wrong otherwise you would have used it as an example, wouldn't you? Cheers from Buenos Aires!

I now remember when I was young (internet was not available for us) learning guitar from a friend of mine, trying to identify the key of some songs to get the rest of it, and never getting to "what the heck of the key is this song in???". I feel today like I have found (and played) the key of one of my life's songs, that finally resolves and comes to rest, after roughly 35 years later.

I'm glad someone's talking about this because I came across one song like this and I'm like, it *wants* to resolve to a particular chord, but if it doesn't, then is that the tonic? What *would* the tonic be? This mention is probably niche af, but in the Aikatsu! anime series, the song Prism Spiral (just search "aikatsu prism spiral") is a perfect example of this. You could make the argument that it's in the key of D minor, but the melody and chord progression always feels like it revolves around, and wants to resolve to, F major. It's got a more complex chord progression, but the pre-chorus and chorus end prominently on a dominant C major.