Adouble tonic is achord progression,melodic motion, orshift of level consisting of a "regular back-and-forth motion" inmelody similar toBruno Nettl's pendulum type[clarification needed] though it uses smallintervals, most often awhole tone though may be almost asemitone to aminor third (seependular thirds).[1]
It is extremely common inAfrican music ("Mkwaze mmodzi"[clarification needed]),Asian music, and European music, including:[3]
InAmerican music, a rare example of a double-tonic is thespiritual "Rock my Soul" though American popular music began to use the double tonic commonly in the last half of the 1900s,[3] includingBeck's "Puttin It Down".[4]
Double tonic patterns may be classified as beginning on the lower ("Sumer is Icumen in", "The Woods so Wild", "The Irish Washerwoman") or upper (most Scottish tunes, passamezzo antico, "Roun' de Corn, Sally", "Shallow Brown", "Mkwaze mmodzi")note and may repeat open endedly, though they are often closed through atonic close, as in :[5]
Am|G|Am-G|Am||
They are also often varied through a binary scheme ending on thedominant 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 thepassamezzo antico.[5]
