Musical Cadences: Explained!

Confused about perfect, plagal, imperfect, and deceptive cadences? What is a cadence in music theory? It's the feeling of resolution to a particular chord. Depending on the context, when we arrive on a certain chord, the feeling can be different depending on the key. This is a cadence.

There are four main types of cadences and in this video, I explore the harmonic changes that produce them and the way that they sound. The perfect authentic cadence is the dominant moving to the tonic. The plagal cadence is the subdominant moving to the tonic. The interrupted cadence is a cadence expected to finish on the tonic but it finished on another chord and the imperfect cadence which is a cadence ending on the dominant.

This video is about music theory, but you don't need to read music in order to understand the example.

If you'd like to learn more about the ideas in this video then please check out my channel for more music lessons!