This article introduces the concept of the transcendental oscillation, in which two chords alternate with one another in a way that transcends traditional tonal practice. This harmonic device appears in a wide variety of settings from Wagner to modern pop music. After discussing some theoretical properties of transcendental oscillations, including their interactions with modality and chromaticism, I analyze transcendental oscillations in the works of Debussy, who made the technique a central component of his style. In Debussy's music, transcendental oscillations may be either intensifying or calming. They are symptomatic of what Sylveline Bourion calls Debussy's "duplication" tendency. As progressions foreign to common practice, they present a novel aspect, but as repetitive progressions, they are easy on the ears. These two central features of transcendental oscillations—their harmonic freshness and their repetitive quality—combine to make them well suited to Debussy's compositional project and attractive to composers to this day.

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The so-called royal road progression (RRP), whose archetypal lead-sheet representation is F–G–Em–Am, is a distinctive feature of modern Japanese popular music. The RRP arose from the manipulation of basic elements of diatonic harmony and coexists with several closely related progressions in J-pop style. Composers often use the RRP to lend Aeolian flavor to major-key songs; however, the RRP is a tonally flexible pattern. After presenting a typology of phrases that use the RRP, I argue that the progression can articulate partial tonic function and can induce a binary tonal system, which occupies the conceptual space between tonal pairing and double-tonic complex. I also provide a diachronic account of the RRP as an element of J-pop history and pop-music history in general. By relating the concepts of partial tonic function and binary tonal system to the RRP, this paper gives insight into the understudied harmonic language of J-pop and invites application of the concepts to other musics.