Cadences in your own tunes
You've been playing cadences all along without naming them. Here they are, in tunes you know.
Ode to Joy is made of cadences
The first eight bars are a period — a question and an answer — and the two cadences are what make it a question and an answer.
The Minuet in G's double bar
The Minuet in G you played (in D major, in our version) ends its first section on a half cadence — it comes to rest on the dominant, A, not the home D. That's why the double bar doesn't sound like an ending: the music has travelled to the dominant and paused. The second section brings it home with a perfect cadence.
Amazing Grace
"How sweet the sound" leans on the IV chord (a subdominant colour), and the final "…me" is a perfect cadence, V → I. The whole tune is the classic hymn frame: I – IV – I – V – I.
Spotting a modulation by its cadence
If a tune in G major reaches a firm cadence that lands on D — with a C♯ leading tone climbing to D — it hasn't just ended a phrase; it's modulated to D major (the dominant key). A cadence in a new key is the clearest sign a piece has moved house.
Try it
Try
Play the two Ode to Joy phrases above one after the other, slowly. On the last note of the first phrase (A), stop and wait — feel the question hanging. Then play the second phrase and let its final G ring. That contrast — comma, then full stop — is the entire shape of the melody, and it's built purely from two different cadences.
The usual mistake
Playing every phrase-end the same way. A half cadence should sound open — don't slow down too much, keep a little forward lean. A perfect cadence should arrive — ease the bow, give the last note room. If you play both flat, the music loses its punctuation and turns into one long run-on sentence.