Cadences - The Songwriters' Secret

www.secretguitarteacher.com/
See how to control the flow of music using cadences - and what that means! 🎸 Using Blowing in the Wind by Bob Dylan as an example, see how, why and when to use this aspect of guitar music theory.
Catch up with the previous lessons here! • Why Guitar Players Nee...
--
Find hundreds more lessons, videos and tutorials at the Secret Guitar Teacher site! Sign up now for a free 30 day trial www.secretguitarteacher.com/
--
Abridged Script:
Cadence is a word we use in music to describe how we use combinations of chords or individual notes to control the flow of a piece of music. Ever wondered how a songwriter knows what chords to use where in a song? Or you may have wondered how it is that some musicians can more or less instantly guess what chord is coming next in a song even though they have never even heard that song before. Well these abilities come largely from understanding the subject of cadences.
We get some understanding of cadences even before we start working on a piece of music - just by reciting the lyrics of a song as a poem. To demonstrate, let’s look at the lyrics of the first song that many guitarists of my generation ever learnt: Bob Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind. Notice what happens, when I recite this like a poem…in particular get a feel for how each line ends.
Now listen to the chords - and see if you can hear how they are arranged to match the way each line ends. In some ways, cadences play a similar role to commas, semi-colons and full-stops or periods in normal prose. I’ll try and exaggerate this slightly to help you spot what I mean. Cadences mostly revolve around the placement of the primary chords in the key. These are the first, fourth and fifth chords. In the last lesson we looked at how chords are built on the steps of the major scale. Here we were using C major as an example.
You can see that the 1 4 5 chords are the only MAJOR chords in the key. So I am playing this in the key of D major. So the chords you’re hearing are D, G and A - the 1 4 5 chords from the key of D. However, because I have got the capo at fret 7 here, the chord shapes I’m using come from the key of G. G is chord 1, C is chord 4 and D is chord 5 in the key of G.
When working with a capo, or when transposing from key to key, things can seem to get very complicated. But this is where being able to think in terms of the numerals helps us simplify things. Because, no matter which key you play in, the way the chords function is dictated by the types of cadences in use and these are all defined in terms of chord numerals. A change from chord 5 to chord 1 gives us what is called a perfect cadence. We hear this best at the end of the refrain in Blowing in the Wind - can you hear how the change from the D shape (chord 5) to the G shape (chord 1) gives us a sense of completion - a perfect or authentic ending to the verse.
At the end of the first and third pairs of lines you can hear a less final close produced by a plagal cadence instead of chord 5 to chord 1, we are moving from chord 4 to chord 1 - C shape to G shape in this case. If the perfect cadence plays the role of a full stop or period - then I often think of the plagal cadence as being a bit more like a semi-colon. We have finished that line, but there’s more to come.
If we look at the definition of an Imperfect cadence you see that I have put a question mark as the first chord in the closing pair. This simply means that any chord followed by the 5 chord will act to leave the line hanging; making it sound incomplete; imperfect or unfinished. In Blowing in the Wind, this is used after the second pair of lines as a device that let’s us know that Mr Dylan’s list of questions is not finished yet. To complete our demonstration of how these cadences control the flow of a song, here is my version of the whole of the first verse…
This lesson is intended as a brief introduction to this important subject. On the Secret Guitar Teacher’s Guitar Music Theory Part 2 Course you can learn a lot more detail about cadences and how they are used to write chord sequences to songs and also how understanding them helps you work out the chords to songs you hear.

[@adamtune8116]

Who the hell could give this a thumbs down??? You sir are a master teacher, and I love your simplicity. Thanks for this lesson.

[@Tahash116]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge with the world. It is very much appreciated.

[@Dantianblue]

Thank you. Very clear, using a great song as a coherent example.

[@jerrysamuels1113]

Dylan's song, lyrically and musically, was a very simple song that virtually anyone could play. But it was the power of the words he chose, simple as they were, that made it a song of a generation.

[@GlobalEltorro]

Great teaching!

[@synthinator375]

Excellent. Thank you !

[@krystilynn3403]

Thank you so much for sharing! Love your videos 🤩

[@Dan-tj6gu]

Thank you sir. A lot to figure out....lol. That's a super helpful video.

[@phiddler1]

wonderful thank you

[@michelledaley55]

Very glad you have shared. xxx

[@jt2465]

Great demo

[@shineisle2263]

🌹❤️👍

[@saimak7079]

Your voice has cadence

[@Alex-xg5kr]

It was Mozart that discovered that you can play a minor scale and make iti sound happy. Check out Rondo alla Turk.
Am C | Am E | F Am | Dm \ | Am \ | G \ | Am \ | E \ | ......

[@herbiesnerd]

I’m amazed right now. My dad was a guitarist. Howard Roberts was his guitar teacher in the 1950’s.
My dad once told me that he would teach me Perfect Cadence and I’d be able to play any song.
Dad always could play any song in his own way using jazz chords. He said it was because of perfect cadence.
He never taught it to me and he died two years ago.
I will be back and I’m going to learn this. I thought it was a secret dad knew that was lost forever.
Thank you for posting this.

[@markhinde710]

I keep saying and I will keep saying it to my wife, "I want to also learn harmonica." It's just so awesome. Your lesson on cadence helps a lot with my understanding theory. Thank you.

[@345kobi]

Master teacher.

[@user-it7lw5rv7q]

Nick is THE best! thank you. As a member of his site, I have learnt a lot and loved everything there

[@lisaguerrero9708]

Very good, you played the harmonica together with guitar and sang very good! Thank you, I didn't know those secrets!! Now I know!!- I learned a lot! #Two thumbs up

[@52archimad]

Thank you sir.

[@tehbawmbmusic4152]

Very effective explanation. It's nice to see a lesson on cadences on the guitar. Hearing it on piano just doesn't have the same effect for me.

[@rizlovedaydream8424]

Superb playing Guitar

[@cavaturnagesh]

beautiful

[@seljukt]

You are a good teacher, sir.

[@RavenMadd9]

thank you sir

[@chriram25]

Teach harmonica.