Stop 5 of 6
Functions and cadences
Rest, tension and resolution: how harmony breathes.
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Stop 5 of 6
Rest, tension and resolution: how harmony breathes.
You already know the seven neighbours on the street. Now you will discover what each one does: some are the home where you rest, others the road that takes you away, and others the steep hill that pushes you back home. That feeling of rest, tension and arrival is what makes a progression “breathe”. By the end of this stop you will be able to listen to a song and tell where home is, where the tension rises and how each phrase ends.
Listen to this four-chord progression. Notice how you feel in each bar:
In the first bar you are calm, at home. In the second you drift away a little, unhurried. In the third something tightens: the ear knows something is missing. In the fourth, relief: you are back. That journey is described by three :
Each function has a main chord (I, IV and V, your ), and the other chords are shared out among them according to the notes they have in common:
| Function | Main chord | Family members | Shared notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tonic | I · C | vi · Am, iii · Em | Am shares C and E with C |
| Subdominant | IV · F | ii · Dm | Dm shares F and A with F |
| Dominant | V · G | vii° · Bdim | Bdim shares B and D with G |
Tonic
Subdominant
Dominant
The iii chord (Em) shares two notes with I (E and G) and also two with V (G and B). That makes it ambiguous: sometimes it sounds like a tonic, sometimes it leads towards the dominant. It is the least-used neighbour on the street, and many progressions avoid it or use it in passing.
Why does the dominant push so hard? Listen to the major scale going up… and stopping on the seventh degree:
You are left hanging, right? That note, B, is only a half step from C and it “pulls” towards it. It is called the , and it is the third of the G chord.
If you add its seventh, F, to G, you get G7. Now the chord contains B and F: a , the most unstable interval. And that tritone resolves in a very specific way: B rises to C and F falls to E. Both notes of C.
That move from tension to rest is called , and it is the force that drives tonal harmony.
A musical phrase ends just like a written sentence: with a full stop, a comma or a question mark. That punctuation is called a , and you recognise it by the last two chords. Listen to all four:
The (or perfect cadence) is the full stop: the dominant resolves to the tonic.
The also ends at home, but arrives from the subdominant. A softer, warmer ending, without the push of the leading tone.
The stops on the dominant. It is a comma or a question: the music is left in the air, waiting for an answer.
The promises to go home and, at the last moment, turns to vi. The ear is surprised and the phrase is extended.
| Cadence | Chords | In C | Feels like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authentic | V → I | G7 → C | full stop |
| Plagal | IV → I | F → C | soft ending, “amen” |
| Half | … → V | F → G | comma, question |
| Deceptive | V → vi | G7 → Am | surprise |
This original melody ends with the leading tone rising to the tonic (B → C). Play it or listen to it twice: first with the authentic ending, then with the deceptive one. The melody is identical; only the last chord changes.
With C underneath, the note C sounds like a final arrival. With Am, the same note sounds wistful and unfinished: the story goes on.
Two endings can use the same chords, V → I, and still not close with the same force. What changes is how each chord is played: which note sits on top, in the highest voice, and which note sits underneath, in the bass. Listen to these three endings in C major. All three are G7 → C:
That is why many harmony textbooks separate the perfect authentic cadence (V and I in root position, with the tonic in the highest voice) from the imperfect one (any of those conditions missing). The labels matter less than hearing the difference, because it is a tool for writing and accompanying: save the most conclusive close for the end of the song, and use the more open ones halfway through, when you want the music to keep moving.
Now use everything together. Listen to this original eight-bar progression:
Analysis in four steps:
Play each progression with a simple strum (four strokes per bar). On the last chord, say its name: “authentic”, “plagal”, “half”, “deceptive”.
Goal: Play each cadence twice in a row and name it out loud on the last chord, at 80 BPM.
Goal: Hum the bass note of every chord in the analysed progression and say whether it is T, S or D, with no mistakes in two passes.
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