The word that tricks you: "cadence" doesn't mean what you think
Guitarshelf's catalog has several sheets called "Perfect cadence", "Plagal cadence" or "Deceptive cadence". The word is a trap: in everyday English, "cadence" means a regular rhythm or pace — a runner's cadence, a marching cadence, the cadence of someone's speech. Nothing to do with tempo or speed here. In music, a cadence isn't a rhythm at all: it's how a chord progression concludes (or deliberately refuses to conclude) at the end of a phrase.
A cadence is punctuation, not a tempo
Think of a cadence as a punctuation mark at the end of a musical sentence: a period, a comma, an ellipsis. It says nothing about how fast you play — the same chord movement is the same cadence whether you play it slowly or quickly. What defines its type is only the pair of chords involved and how resolved (or unresolved) it makes the phrase sound.
The four cadences you'll run into most often
Guitarshelf's catalog illustrates the four most common cases, all in the key of C major so they're directly comparable:
- Perfect / authentic cadence (V-I) — G7 to C. The most stable of the four: the ear feels the phrase is genuinely finished. This is the classic "end of the song" cadence.
- Plagal cadence (IV-I) — F to C. A softer resolution, less final than the perfect cadence. It's the one behind the closing "Amen" of many hymns.
- Deceptive cadence (V-vi) — G7 to A minor. The ear expects a C and lands somewhere else instead: a false ending, used to surprise the listener or stretch a phrase further than expected.
- Suspended cadence — E sus4 to E. Deliberately left hanging, like a question rather than a statement.
Why it's worth telling them apart by ear
Once you can recognize a perfect cadence versus a deceptive one just by listening, you can anticipate where a progression is about to "land" before you've even finished playing it — useful both for improvising and for writing your own progressions. It's one of the rare theory concepts you can verify purely by ear, without reading a single note.
Practice it
The most effective approach is to play all four sheets back to back, in the same order as above, to compare their color directly: Perfect cadence — G7 to C, Plagal cadence — F to C, Deceptive cadence — G7 to A minor and Suspended cadence — E sus4 to E.