Greetings fellow bloggers!
Today I'm going to talk about cadence structures in a song I picked. I'm going to be honest I had extreme difficulty doing this post! At first I looked through my playlist and looked at a few songs. I was able to find the beat and meter but had trouble finding the Perfect Authentic Cadences, Imperfect Authentic Cadences, and Half Cadences in the phrase, whether it was dominant or tonic and on what note it landed on. So I basically had trouble with most of it... I then thought about the music we listened to in class; the Irish jigs and reels and how it was easier for me to pin point the cadences in that kind of music, but once again I had trouble finding a song I could work with. So I went back to the absolute basics and listened to some nursery rhymes; I found it easy to find the cadences, phrases, beat, and meter, as it should be. With a little more understand I went on youtube and went through folk song after folk song but still found nothing. I then remembered that waltzes were easy (depending on the song) to evaluate, so i researched that and came across Jueventino Rosas 'Over the Waves Waltz'. It's a very well know waltz and I decided to give it a shot and find the cadence structure in it.
So here we go! I always loved waltzing music it makes me want to get up and waltz, it makes me feel as though I can waltz even though I probably can't. The texture is very deep in this song; it is played by an orchestra so there are many layers of instrument playing, creating depth in the song It fluctuates throughout the song becoming more complex at times than others. I went through such a process to do this blog post. I really want to not only get it right for the sake of my readers because I didn't want to be wrong and confuse them but also on a personal level I wanted to be able to fully understand this concept. I found it difficult to pin point what note each phrase ended on so I went online and found a notes scale because I can't read music sheets that well and found a music sheet of 'Over the Waves' I listened to the song on youtube and followed along. I could count the triple meter starting at :50, the song starts off slow with a few string instruments playing, that phrase ends on :57 on the chord F (4), on the solfège scale it is Fa. This is significant because the fact that it ends on the F chord means that it is a Half Cadence, because a Half Cadence is any chord from 1 (C) to 5 (G) and F is 4. A Half Cadence makes the phrase sound like it should keep going, there is harmonic and melodic tension. If you listen to the song and stop the track at :57 you can feel the restless tension. I kept stopping and starting the song to listen to the tension of the Half Cadences presented in the song. From :57 the melody from phrase "a" repeats but is slightly different making this phrase "a'". The second phrase ends at 1:07 on chord B (8) which on the solfège scale is Do. This phrase ends with a Perfect Authentic Cadence. It is a Perfect Authentic Cadence (PAC) because a PAC is a chord between 5(G) to 2(D) so since B is 8 on the scale, it fits. Also a PAC sounds complete there is no harmonic or melodic tension with the ending note, if you stopped the song there you could end it and it would sound complete. This makes these two phrase otherwise known as a Period, a Half Cadence (HC) -Perfect Authentic Cadence (PAC) structure.
The rest of the song is HC- PAC as well. Because for example at 1:14 the phrase pauses on E (3) making it a Half Cadence and the second Phrase at 1:23 pauses on G (5) making it a Perfect Authentic Cadence.
As I listened to this song i couldn't help but think of and relate it to one of my favorite childhood movies, Anastasia. Just because I analyzed a waltz and one of the songs I love in Anastasia is a waltz like song too. I always loved the song 'Once Upon a December" and the scene that goes along with it. It was a triple meter song and the people are waltzing gracefully in the grand ball room. I understand music much more now and I evaluate it more whenever I'm listening to it. After reading the text book countless times and listening to 'Over the Waves' what seemed like thousands of times I now understand cadences and their structures more!
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