Music Cadence – A Chord Progression At The End Of a Phrase or Song

Good morning. This is Duane. We’ve doing a series on music theory titled “Good Stuff You Really Ought to Know About Music!” We’ve covered lots of areas so far and today we’re going to cover cadences. A  music cadence is a chord progression that concludes the end of a phrase or the end of a song, the end of a section. It comes to some sort of rest, in other words. All chord progressions don’t come to a sense of rest, do they? You can have this. That last chord has a sense of rest but the others certainly don’t. Whatever the chord is, they don’t have a sense of rest until you get the end of a phrase or the end of a song. That’s what a cadence is. It’s a chord progression that comes to a sense of rest.

There’s four main kinds. There’s others but I’m just going to cover the four main types of cadences. A cadence that goes like this, that’s the most familiar kind of cadence. You’d be playing any kind of song and you end it like this, you know that the song or certainly the section is finished. That’s called an authentic cadence. Authentic cadence is 5 to 1.

When you have a 4 chord going to a 1 chord, that’s called a plagal cadence, also known as an amen cadence. Of course it’s used in hymns but it’s used in a lot of other things. It’s a 4 to 1 chord progression. I’m talking about the key of C but we’ll do it in a couple other keys as well. We have an authentic cadence, which is 5 to 1, a plagal cadence that is 4 to 1.

A half cadence is where you end on 5. It doesn’t matter where you come from. It could be a flat 6 to 5. It could be a 2 to 5. It could be anything but you end on the 5 chord or the 5-7 chord. That’s called a half cadence because you’re half done before you get home to the 1 chord.

Then there’s a deceptive cadence where you expect this. In an authentic cadence you expect that, don’t you? What if you go like this? That’s called a deceptive cadence because you’re tricking the people. They’re expecting you to go home to 1 but you go somewhere else like so. That can lead other places.

There’s four main kinds of cadences. What are they? Authentic is 5 to 1. Plagal is 4 to 1. Half cadence is where you end on 5 and deceptive cadence is where you don’t end on 1; you go to some other chord after 5-7 chord.

Now let’s do it in another key just to make that clear. Let’s say we’re in the key of E flat based on the scale of E flat. Authentic cadence would be the 5 chord, 1 2 3 4 5 B flat going home to one. The plagal cadence would be the 4 chord going home to 1, so amen. The half cadence would be any chord that leads to the 5 chord. It could be … but you’d end on the 5-7 chord. The deceptive cadence, again, is 5 to anything except 1. It’s usually a 6 minor, by the way, but not always. Doesn’t have to be. The four kinds of cadences then are authentic, plagal, half, and deceptive.

If you enjoy this sort of thing, come on over to PlayPiano and sign up for our entire series of piano tips. They’re all free. Hope you can join us. Bye bye for now.

***For lots more good stuff on piano playing come on over to my website at https://www.playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips – “Exciting Piano Chords & Sizzling Chord Progressions!”

Here’s a great little book on chords and chord progressions on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Chords-Chord-Progressions-Exciting-ebook/dp/B0076OUGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404158669&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+chords+duane+shinn

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKM0MQ_5wEo&feature=youtu.be

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