Spoken language would be unbearable without punctuation, and music solves the same problem the same way. A cadence is the pair of chords that closes a phrase — and the choice of pair tells the listener exactly what kind of pause this is. Full stop? Comma? Question mark? A raised eyebrow? There are four standard answers, and once you can name them you will hear them everywhere, because nearly every phrase of tonal music ends in one.
All the examples below live in C major, whose seven chords are C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, and B° — but a cadence is a relationship between scale degrees, so everything here transposes to any key untouched.
The authentic cadence: V → I, the full stop
The strongest ending in tonal music is the dominant falling to the tonic: G (or G7) to C. Everything about it converges on home. The root drops a perfect fifth — the most decisive bass move there is. The leading tone B rises a half step to the keynote C. And if the seventh is present, F falls a half step to E, discharging the tritone inside G7 directly onto the tonic chord’s core. When the final tonic arrives in its plainest position with the keynote on top, classical theory calls the cadence perfect — the difference between a firm period and a slightly trailing one. Either way, this is how music says done.
The plagal cadence: IV → I, the soft landing
F to C closes a phrase without any of that urgency. IV shares the keynote itself with the tonic — F’s notes are F – A – C — so nothing in the chord demands resolution; the harmony simply settles. This is the “Amen” appended to hymns, and the gentle close of countless gospel, soul, and rock choruses. Where V → I argues its way home, IV → I exhales. Reach for it when an ending should feel warm rather than won.
The half cadence: … → V, the open question
A half cadence doesn’t resolve at all — the phrase simply stops on the dominant. Any approach works (I → V, ii → V, IV → V); what defines the cadence is where it rests. Because the dominant is the key’s tensest chord, pausing there leaves the sentence hanging: and then…? Classic phrase-building pairs a question with its answer — four bars ending on V, four matching bars ending V → I. Listen for that ask-and-answer shape in folk tunes, anthems, and classical themes alike; it is one of music’s oldest structures.
Minor keys own a famously dramatic version: the Andalusian cadence walks the bass down i – bVII – bVI – V (in A minor: Am – G – F – E) and parks on the dominant. That last step, F to E, approaches the resting chord from a half step above — the signature flamenco cliff-edge.
The deceptive cadence: V → vi, the surprise
Everything about the dominant promises the tonic — so go somewhere else. In C, G7 resolves to A minor instead of C: the leading tone B still rises to C, the bass steps up to A instead of falling to C, and the arrival chord contains C and E, two-thirds of the tonic it impersonates. The ear gets almost what it was promised, which is why the move reads as bittersweet rather than wrong. Composers use it to extend a phrase that threatened to end too soon; songwriters use it to keep a chorus aloft one more cycle. The pop “Axis” progression I–V–vi–IV bakes exactly this V-to-vi turn into its loop, which is part of why it never feels finished — by design.
The four endings at a glance
| Cadence | Move | In C | Reads as |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authentic | V → I | G7 → C | Full stop |
| Plagal | IV → I | F → C | Soft landing |
| Half | … → V | Dm → G | Open question |
| Deceptive | V → vi | G7 → Am | Surprise |
Hearing cadences in the wild
Cadences are easiest to catch at the ends of sung lines. A verse that keeps lifting at the end of every fourth bar is stacking half cadences; the chorus that finally lands pays them off with an authentic one. The 12-bar blues ends its form with the dominant driving back to the top — an authentic cadence recycled as fuel. And when a sad song ends on an unexpectedly consoling chord, check for a deceptive resolution or a plagal goodbye. The four moves are small, but they carry most of music’s sense of paragraph and page.
One habit will teach you more than any list: every time a song feels like it breathed, stopped, or asked a question, pause and name the last two chords. Their jobs — laid out in functional harmony — are the grammar; cadences are where the grammar becomes rhetoric.
Keep exploring
- Functional harmony — why V pulls and I rests: the jobs underneath every cadence.
- Voice leading — the note-by-note mechanics that make resolutions sound inevitable.
- I–IV–V — three chords, all three functions, every cadence within reach.