Ear Training: Finding Tonic, Hearing Cadences

Finding the Tonic

The tonic is home. It’s the note (and the chord) that everything else orbits around. When a song ends on the tonic, you feel settled. When it doesn’t, you feel like something’s unfinished.

The simplest way to find the tonic: sing the bass notes. Listen to the lowest note in each chord and try to hum along. As the bass moves, pay attention to which note feels like the destination — the one the other notes want to reach. That’s your tonic.

Another trick: listen for the cadences. When you hear a strong resolution — a dominant chord snapping to a resting chord — the chord it lands on is probably the tonic. The perfect cadence (V → I) is the clearest signpost. If you can hear that pull-and-release, you’ve found home.

Hearing Cadence Types

Once you can find the tonic, start listening for how the music arrives there:

• V → I (perfect cadence): A sharp, definitive landing. The dominant chord pulls you in and deposits you on the tonic. This sounds like a period at the end of a sentence.

• IV → I (plagal cadence): A gentler arrival. The subdominant drifts into the tonic. This sounds like a sigh, or the “amen” at the end of a hymn.

A cadence is just a path home that is familiar enough that someone bothered to give it a name. These two — perfect and plagal — are the primary ones.

Load up a familiar song on the Harmony Wheel and listen for these. Once you can name the cadence type, you’ll start hearing them everywhere — at the end of phrases, at section boundaries, at the emotional peaks.

Stepwise Motion and What It Tells You

One useful ear training shortcut: listen for stepwise motion in the bass — notes walking steadily upward or downward, especially by half steps.

When the bass moves by step instead of leaping, the chords above it are often doing something interesting. A chromatic line (like C → B → B♭ → A moving down, or C → C# → D moving up) almost always involves a mix of diatonic chords and borrowed or passing chords. You can map the bass notes against the 10 Chord Toolkit and figure out what’s happening.

Hear a descending bass line on the Harmony Wheel

Listen for the bass. Then ask: which of these chords are in the key? Which ones are borrowed? The descending line ties them together — the smooth bass motion makes even the “outside” chords sound natural.

Tonal Ambiguity: Songs That Won’t Sit Still

Not every song has a clear tonic. Some songs are happier in motion than at rest.

Take a famous example: the chord progression in “Sweet Home Alabama.” It goes G → F → C, repeating endlessly. Is it V → IV → I in C? Or I → ♭VII → IV in G? Google says D Mixolydian. Nobody agrees.

Try both interpretations on the Harmony Wheel: as C or as G

And that’s okay. Some progressions genuinely resist a single key assignment. The loop keeps moving, and any note could feel like home depending on which beat you emphasize. When you encounter one of these, don’t force it. Acknowledge the ambiguity and listen to what the progression does rather than trying to name what it is.

The Rule of Three

Here’s something to listen for once you’ve gotten comfortable with the toolkit: the moment when a repeated progression doesn’t do what you expect.

Storytellers have known this forever: repeat something three times, and the audience starts to trust it. The first time is information. The second time is confirmation. The third time is expectation. And once you’ve built that expectation — once the listener is leaning into the pattern — that’s when you have power. You can deliver it and satisfy them. Or you can break it and surprise them.

Music works the same way. You’ve heard I → V → vi → IV a hundred times. Your ear knows what’s coming. The verse repeats, the chorus comes back, the loop goes around — and your brain starts predicting. But then a chord is substituted, or the resolution gets delayed, or a borrowed chord sneaks in where the diatonic one should be. That moment — the broken pattern — is what creates goosebumps.

Think of it as reaching into a cookie jar that’s always had cookies in it. You reach in and there’s… something else. Not bad — maybe even better — but different. Your brain notices the break. That noticing is the emotional payload.

The better you get at hearing the expected pattern, the more you’ll feel the moments that break it. That’s what ear training is really for — not just identifying chords, but feeling the surprises. Your ear is no fool. It’s already doing this work. We’re just giving it the vocabulary.

What to Practice

• Play a song you know well. Before the song ends, try to sing the tonic note. Hold it. Does the song end on that note? If not, what note does it end on?
• Listen for the bass. In any song, try humming the lowest notes. Notice when the bass moves by step (smooth) vs. by leap (dramatic).
• Pick a song and try to identify at least one cadence. Is it perfect (V → I)? Plagal (IV → I)? Deceptive (V → vi)?
• Open the Harmony Wheel and try entering chord progressions from songs you’re listening to. Seeing the chords on the wheel while you hear them builds the connection between your ears and the theory.