A piece of writing with no punctuation or paragraph breaks even when the words involved make sense can be confusing and hard to understand it doesn’t let the reader know the rhythm of the words or mark out the different ideas a lack of proper sentence structure turns a relatively good set of words into a mass of nonsense.
- No-one would write language like this, but if you don’t understand musical cadences, you might be writing songs like this.
Cadences are the chord changes that come at the end of musical sentences. They occur at the end of pieces and sections, but also at the end of lines as well.
There are two basic jobs they do:-
A cadence can sound final like a full stop/period
or
A cadence can sound like it needs to carry on – like a question mark.
The ‘Classic’ cadences.
At college you learn of four common cadences:
Perfect – Chord V to chord I eg. G to C – this is the classic ending ‘full stop’ cadence.
Imperfect – I to V the opposite of the perfect eg. C to G – the classic way of making your musical sentence sound unfinished.
Plagal – An ending cadence you hear in lots of hymns – Iv to I eg F to C. This also sounds finished.
Interrupted – V to Vi eg. G to Am. This sounds unfinished because after the V chord we expect to hear I. Instead we hear vi – a minor chord that makes it sound as if the music has to continue.
These aren’t the only options however. In the various modes there are plenty of other chord changes that can sound finished, or unfinished.
The basic principle is: move from an ‘unfinished’ chord to a ‘finished’ chord and it sounds final. Do the opposite and it sounds as if the music is going to carry on.
Here are some other cadence possibilites:
In A aeolian G -> Am sounds finished, Am -> F sounds unfinished.
In E phrygian Dm -> F sounds unfinished, F -> Em sounds finished.
How to use this information?
Look at your songs – do you have the right mixture of ‘finished’ and ‘unfinished’ phrases? A good place to have an unfinished cadence for example is just before the chorus – end unfinished and you’ll set up the right energy for the start of the chorus.
Think about where you need moments of tension – that’s where you want an unfinished cadence. Think where you need an ending or a moment of release – that’s where you need to return to the home chord via something like the perfect cadence.





How to Harmonize is a collection of 5 primer lessons aimed at Songwriters who are just starting out and want to know more about how to harmonize their songs – how chords and harmonies work.

