- Hi, we've already got another film out
on something called the perfect cadence
and if you hadn't had a
chance to see that as yet,
you may just want to look at that one
before you come back for this one.
Not that it matters terribly,
but what I explained in that one,
is that cadence's are kind
of like musical punctuation.
They're musical full stops, and commas,
musical question marks even perhaps.
But they're ways of
stating that we've come
to the end of a phrase of music.
And in this film,
we're going to think about one of these
four main cadences that gets used.
This one's called the plagal cadence.
So when you come to the end of a phrase,
you may want to use two chords that
form this thing called the plagal cadence.
Now in order to do a plagal cadence,
you have to do this.
We have chord IV, followed by chord I.
How do I find the notes of chord IV
followed by chord I?
Well, first of all, if I'm
in C Major for example,
here's C, the first note of the scale.
Here's F, the fourth note of the scale.
There's C, we've got D and E,
then we've got F as the fourth note.
So what I do to form a triad,
is I take this C,
and I say let's find the
note that is three above it,
and the note that's five above it.
So C, E, G is chord I in C Major.
It's a chord of C.
It's sometimes called a tonic chord.
So there we are, that's chord I.
For chord IV, I do exactly the same thing.
Here's F, the fourth note of the scale,
A is the third note above it,
C is the fifth note above it,
so F, A, C gives me the
notes I need for chord IV.
So a plagal cadence is chord IV,
followed by chord I.
So if I go IV, followed by I,
that's the recipe for a plagal cadence.
Sounds a bit odd if I
just kind of play these
in a sort of bold way just as two triads,
but if I space out these
notes in some other way,
it can sound very nice.
So I can use the notes of chord IV
in any way I want to.
I don't just have to
have those three notes.
So I could use the notes
F, A, C, like this.
See I've got F at the bottom,
and at the top I've got A there,
I've got C here.
Or I could do it like this
so I've got F there,
another F here,
I've got an A there, I've got a C there.
If I wanted to have a really thick chord
I could do something like this.
So I've got F, C, A, F, A, C, F.
But all of those notes are F, A, C.
So you're not limited to
just having three parts,
you can have as many parts as you like
as long as you're using
those notes F, A, C.
And of course you can do
exactly the same thing
for chord I.
So I could have a plagal
cadence that sounds like this,
so there's chord IV followed by chord I.
I could have one that sounds like this.
I could have one that sounds like this.
I could have one that's
got more notes in it.
You see the possibilities are endless
as long as we're using those notes
that belong to chord IV followed
by the notes that belong to chord I.
Sometimes the plagal cadence is called
the amen cadence because there are hymns
and pieces of music that are sometimes
sung in church that have a
kind of "amen" at the end.
But the trouble with that
is that you can sing "amen"
to any two chords or any two notes really
so it's not the best
way of sorting it out,
but if you're just thinking
about which notes you need,
you can't go too far wrong.
So if I had a melody that had
a plagal cadence at the end,
it may sound something like this.
So you can hear it sounds
like another kind of
musical full stop.
I always think the perfect cadence
and the plagal cadence sound
like musical full stops
because they finish on I,
it takes you home doesn't it.
It feels like the end of something.
So if I put that phrase together with
some other chords,
they might go like this.
And you can hear that IV-I at the end
giving me a plagal cadence.
So if you're a keyboard player,
you might like to have some fun
just playing around with
this chord IV, chord I thing,
working out how many
different ways you could
organise that at the keyboard.
And even if you're not a keyboard player,
that's fine, you can take your instrument,
or you can sing, and you
can work out a melody
that uses these notes,
followed by these notes.
So you get the feeling of this chord IV,
followed by this chord I.
And obviously if you're
using these as chords
then the melody would
have to belong as well.
So you may have chord IV
with a melody like this,
and then a I.
As long as those melody
notes are spelling out
these notes from chord IV and chord I.
So there we are, I hope
you have endless fun
playing with the plagal cadence.
