#klates

Where to start. In short: Cadences are like the commas and full stops of music. They are phrases of chord patterns that give music a sense of either needing to move on, or needing to stop.

At the end of a passage of music, you might notice that the music itself feels like it needs to finish. This is what the cadence does.

Feel free to bash all of this out on a piano as you go along. In fact, I encourage it.

I suppose we'd better go back over degrees of the scale. In music, we use the Roman numerals to indicate the position of a chord in a scale. Major chords use upper case and minor (and diminished) chords use lower. I'm going to stick with C major all the way unless I say otherwise.

C - I Dm - ii Em - iii F - IV G - V Am - vi Bdim - vii 

(Just need to mention, I think cadences are one of the areas where the names of shit are different in the US from England. I'll teach you what I know and hope it holds.)

The four main cadences you'll come across are:

Perfect

Imperfect

Plagal

Interrupted

Two of these are 'comma' cadences and two of them are 'stop' cadences. The ones you;ll come across most often are perfect and imperfect. 

Perfect cadences are designed to END a piece or a phrase. They use the chords IV-V-I (Or in C major: F-G-C). The V chord can be replaced with V7 and it still works. 

Imperfect cadences (also called a half-cadence) use the same chords in a different order. They are designed to make a piece feel like it's pausing in the middle before needing to move on. They use the chords IV-I-V.

Plagal cadences (also known as the 'Amen' cadence) are another 'stop' type. They use x-IV-I instead of x-V-I, where x is pretty much any chord ever. Typically it'll use the sub-dominant relative minor, which makes it ii-IV-I.

Interrupted cadences start out sounding like perfect, and then switch to go somewhere else at the last second just to catch you out. It's pretty much anything to V and then V to anything other than I, usually vi. Oh and the V is actually more likely to be V7. This cadence is a particular menace. Its usual form is ii-V7-vi or IV-V7-vi, but its pretty much just as likely to be something else entirely. Slippery little bastard.

I HOPE THIS EXPLAINS CADENCES it probably doesn't at all omg im so sorry

Whatever you do, don't try and read the wikipedia page. That thing is a minefield of confusing musical terminology that even I can only barely decipher.

There are also a whole bunch of other cadences that crop up like phrygians and inverteds and lydians but it's best to just avoid them like the plague. Things are bad enough as it is.

jesus christ cadances you need to slow down

i thought your tag said tw: typos omfg

what if people have a very severe trauma of typos

like

maybe from english class or something

what no i mean like why is no one in the chat now? if we havent talked in ages that is fixable by you coming back to the chat, see

i have tried coming in the chat before there was just no one there i'm sorry :(

Source: [x]

OKAY. Look at the circle of fifths. The inside circle is the RELATIVE minor to the outside, not the tonic minor. 

In C: Tonic = C minor Relative = A minor

This is important. Relative pairs have the same key signature, and so have the same notes in their scale. Same accidentals, same everything. It will just start in a different place.

Try playing a C major scale, but starting and finishing on A instead. That's essentially an A minor scale:

A B C D E F G A

There are however some complications involved here. Minor scales are contrary little pests, making life awkward for everyone.

The ACTUAL (and by actual I mean most common. The previous scale is also a version of a minor scale) notes in an A minor scale are as follows:

A B C D E F G# A

That's right, there's an extra little accidental lurking in there just to confuse us. The seventh note of this scale is raised by a half-note.

Because minor scales hate you and will poo on everything you love.

This isn't the end of it though. The scale I just showed you is called a Harmonic minor. The scale I told you to play first, with no accidentals, is its brother the 'natural' minor, and they then have another brother. The Melodic minor.

Melodic minors are so ridiculous, they're not even the same going up as they are coming down. The notes change. 

On the way up, it's quite similar to the tonic major (A Major). This means that although the third note stays where it is, it's got these random sharps involved.

Except they're not random, we got them from A Major. 

But then, coming down again, it does some damn funny things. Like flattening the 6th and 7th. This essentially turns it into a natural minor. So you get this:

A B C D E F# G# A A G F E D C B A

All of this only tells you how to work out relative minors. What if you need a tonic?

First you add three flats to the key signature. If it's already in the sharps, you start taking them away.

The notes that get flattened by you gratuitous key-altering are the 3rd, the 6th and the 7th. So again in C:

Natural - C D Eb F G Ab Bb C Harmonic - C D Eb F G Ab B C Melodic - C D Eb F G A B C Bb Ab G F Eb D C

I HOPE THIS HELPS.

motherfucking minors omg

but yeah it helps they'll just take,,,,,a lot of practicing