Tonic - Predominant - Dominant - Tonic
In tonal music, certain chords have an inclination to progress to certain other chords. We call this
propensity harmonic tendency.
The varios diatonic chords fall into four basic categories of harmonic tendency.
1.The tonic, abbrevietade as T or the I chord. The toni is the chord to which all other harmonies tend
to progress or gravitate.
2.The dominant, abbrevieted as D, which includes V, viio, their seventh chords. These chords tend to
progress or gravitate directaly to the tonic.
3.The Pre-dominant, abbreviated as PD, which includes IV, ii and their seventh chords. These chords
tend to progress or gravitate directly to some dominant harmony.
Since the tendencies of the remaining iii and vi chords are focused and more variable in their sense
of harmonic motion...they often precede
predominant chords, substitute for the tonic or dominant, or serve as a conector chords linking
harmonies of different functions
The continual recurrence of certain chords progrressions in tonal music cas conditioned our sense of
harmonic tendency, so that
we tend to take such normative progressions for granted.. However, there is an underlying basis for
harmonic tendency... the tendency of an active scale degree(2,4,6,7) in a chord to move to a more
stable scale degree(1,3 or 5) in the folowing chord, and(2) the frequente occurrence of chordal roots
which progress by descending 5ths. The chords in the dominant family(V e viio, and their seventh
chords) contain tendency tones, the leading tone, which wants to move
to the tonic by half-step motion)7-8), and the supertonic, which likewise tends to move to the
tonic,(201). In addition, both V and V7 both resolve to I by a root movement that descends perfect
5th.
vi ii viiº
I
iii IV V tonic
variable pre-dominant dominant
