I’m enjoying creating our new Music Theory for Guitar course. One of the musical concepts in the course is called a Deceptive Cadence. Worship leaders use this technique quite often to extend a worship song.
It’s common for a song to end with a chord called the V, or V7, to a chord called the I. There isn’t space here to talk about the various chord structures and keys, but the I chord is the root chord of a key. For example in the key of ‘G’ the I is the ‘G’ chord. The V in the key of ‘G’ is the chord ‘D.’
A ‘D’ or ‘D7’ chord resolves nicely to the chord ‘G.’ A deceptive cadence is when you change to the VI chord at the end of a song instead of the I.
A good example is the song ‘Lord I Lift Your Name On High.’ I know many of you have our ‘Worship Guitar Class’ course and this song is in the first volume. The chords are predominately ‘G C D C.’ It ends with the chords ‘D,’ ‘Dsus,’ G…..
The deceptive cadence for the key of ‘G’ is the VI chord which is the chord ‘Em.’ Instead of playing ‘D,’ Dsus,’ ‘G’ … you can play ‘D,’ ‘Dsus,’ Em.’ The ‘Em’ is on the last word ‘high.’ Play it for a measure then half a measure on ‘Am’ and ‘D’ ‘Dsus’ for the 2nd half of the measure and ending on G. The ending is below…
| Em | Am Dsus D | G C | D C | G
… high. Lord I lift your name on high.
We often repeat the deceptive cadence 2 or 3 times before finally ending on G.
If you’ve ever wanted to learn to read music or to understand music theory, would love to have you join our music theory class. 🙂
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