Excuses any theory ignorance: As i write songs and chord progressions the biggest problem I am having is ending a progression. I always seem to get back to the V-I or V-vi or IV-I. I'm just wondering what can I do in terms of fills, chords etc to have a cadence(I think its cadence?) that isn't as reconizable as say V-I, V7-I , IV-I etc, and gives the progressions a little more interesting.
Thanks
I found myself having the same problem, mostly because when I write melody lines, they tend to fit on those dreaded "normal" cadences very easily.
While I don't have a great answer for making the monotonous feeling go away, I can tell you what helped me!
I found that I was writing a lot of really short progressions, ones that were only one or two measures long, which sometimes ends up repeating 4 times in a single vocal line, and ends up sounding really boring. So I stretched them out a little bit, started trying think about writing riffs and progressions that lasted more like 8-12 measures without repeating too many of the same intervals. Takes longer to come up with something decent, but when it comes, there's rarely an issue with that extremely hashed out feeling.
Other usable ideas include ending on an octave, or leaving yourself hanging out a little by ending on a note other than the root. Creates a lot of tension, but if you can work in your melody well, it's a pretty striking effect.
Those cadences are frequently used because they sound "perfect", and it never hurts to take advantage of that. See if changing your chord voicings helps relieve your boredness, add a 7th or a 9th in there to spice things up!
Do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life...
What I like to do when I get stuck with the same old cadence is avoid progressions with an even number of measures or beats. Alot of the time, people will write progressions over two, four, eight, or whatever even number of measures. I find that if you try to write over, say, five measures, you force yourself to struggle a bit with making them come together and you'll actually force yourself to experiment with ideas, or maybe even just stumble across some. Same thing with beats. You could have three measures 4/4 and try making the fourth measure in 7/4. I also like to end on chords that create tension, such as the vi for that deceptive feel. It makes me want to keep going and often encourages new progressions or dynamic/key changes.
you could always bust out the vi-I, it's called an imperfect cadence i think
el_warko
Another simple way to avoid a straight V-I (or V-i) cadence is to use one of the following:
vii-I (ie Bm7b5-C)
viidim7-i (ie G#dim7-Am)
Vaug-I (ie Gaug-C)
