Tantalizing Tendencies

Nearly every aspect of life, including human beings ourselves, have natural tendencies towards certain things; a propensity to do something or be something or to act in a certain fashion. Dogs have a tendency to bark at strangers, for example, or students at Penn State have a tendency to go out and party on the weekend. It is just something that is done, and it is perfectly normal in our understanding of the world.

Just like everything else in life, music has natural tendencies within it as well. These are known as tendency tones, which are pitches that tend to progress to some pitch classes more than others and are most often represented by a scale degree (Source). These tendencies push the music forward to other pitches, giving the music a sense of a very specific direction with forward motion. In many ways, this keeps music from stagnating, and the resolution of these tendency tones give audiences a sense of completion, or as we say in music, “resolution.”

(Source)

The above image is the C major scale with the numbered scale degrees. It is a very common scale, with no sharps or flats, which makes it a very common key signature for warm-ups; furthermore, nearly all beginner music is written in this key because instrumentalists and vocalists do not have to worry about the key signature then. Thus, it makes the perfect example as we move forward.

Two of the major tendency tones in western tonal music are scale degree 4, also known as the subdominant, and scale degree 7, also known as the leading tone. The subdominant almost always resolves down to scale degree 3. Aptly named, the leading tone is likely one of the strongest tendency tones in Western tonal music, as it naturally wants to resolve to the tonic pitch, scale degree 1. In fact, this tendency is so strong that musicians and vocalists, if asked to sustain this pitch for a long time, often tend to go sharp in a natural movement towards scale degree 1. Thus, the leading tone is often very difficult to tune due to its own natural tendencies.

These tendencies can be heard in the playing of the C major scale, as found in the video above. If you listen closely, you can hear the tendencies within the scale. Between scale degrees 3 and 4, while moving up, the sound seems to struggle to cross an audial barrier, while between scale degrees 7 and 1 ascending, the tones seem to natural slide to one another. Similarly, the scale seems to struggle gaining momentum while descending from scale degree 1 to scale degree 7, while gaining momentum between scale degree 4 and 3.

Even the untrained ear can hear these tendencies within the music, and this is what allows people to easily pick up on songs and sing along. One great example of this was demonstrated by Benjamin Zander, current conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, in his TED Talk entitled, “The Transformative Power of Classical Music.”

In the above clip, Zander analyzes Chopin’s Prelude, demonstrating the effectiveness of tendency tones. While proving that no one is tone deaf, Zander also demonstrates the power of tendency tones in leading audiences in a very specific direction for the progression of the music. In the tone progression, B, A, G, F, and the final resolution comes with E, but the audience is able to tell that should be the next note in the piece before Zander ever plays it and without ever having heard the piece before.

These tendency tones are vital to music. They allow composers to communicate motion with nothing more black notes on a crisp white piece of paper; they allow us to predict what will happen next in the music; they allow churches to sing unfamiliar hymns on Sunday and learn them so quickly. We all have our tendencies, and just like they give us distinct characteristics, the tendencies in music perform a similar function. And, as we see in this post, I have a tendency to be long-winded!