As guitar players, we often learn to play using shapes of chords or positions of scales across the neck of the guitar and there is nothing wrong with that. However, it may cause some problems when trying to use voice leading in our playing.
In this post I will talk about what is voice leading, why should you be aware of it and how to use it when playing.
What Is Voice Leading?
Many of us do not really understand what is voice leading when it comes to playing the guitar, but the idea is simple.
Every chord that you play have at least 3 notes (a triad chord) and, in jazz, usually you will play 4 note chords (seventh chords). The notes in the chord are called voices and when you play one chord and then a second chord you are leading those voices hence – voice leading.
To make good use of voice leading you should try to “move” the voices as little as possible. For instance, when you are playing the chord progression Dm7 – G7 – Cmaj7, you can choose to lead the voices like this:
On the contrary, you can choose to lead the voices like so:
In the first example, I made big jumps between each of the voices and you can hear that the voices do not really connect to one another. It does not mean it doesn’t sounds good, but it leaves a feeling of empty space between each one of the chords like they are not related to one another.
In the second one, I made smaller jumps between the voices and I “moved” the voices as little as possible. Because I did not make big jumps and I kept many of the voices unmoved, the chords feel more connected to one another, as one is the natural continuation of the other.
But How Do I Learn How To Connect The Voices Better?
The first thing you need to understand is that in many of the common chord progression (like ii – V – I or vi – ii – V – I or iii – vi – ii – V), the chords share similar notes. As mentioned before, the idea of voice leading is to “move” the voices as little as possible.
So, if I am looking at the chord progression Dm7 – G7 – Cmaj7 (ii – V – I), first I must understand what are the notes of each one of the chords:
As you can see, between the three chords there are some shared notes.
So, Some Chords Share The Same Notes. Now What?
When we think about voice leading, we always think about how to connect the chord that we are playing right now to the chord that we will play next. As in the example above, we first play the chord Dm7 and then we move to G7. Now, we need to think of a way to play these two chords with minimal amount of “movement” when changing between them. And here we are introduced to chord inversions.
As you can see in the table, seventh chords are constructed with 4 notes. The 1 (Root), the 3, the 5 and the 7, and when playing a chord you can decide to construct it in any way you like. For example: 1 – 3 – 5 – 7 | 5 – 1- 3 – 7 | 3 – 7 – 1 -5 | and many more. We can use these chord inversions to our benefit when doing voice leading.
I will now give you some examples for voice leading using chord inversions:
E.g.1
E.g.2
E.g.3
Why Should I Think About Voice Leading?
Voice leading comes in handy when comping (playing the chords in small band situation), soloing, playing a chord melody and writing music. It is also a great way to deepen your understanding of the guitar, the notes on the fretboard and knowledge of music harmony. Practicing voice leading, and its variations, will strengthen your playing technique and versatility and will make you a more full rounded guitar player and musician.
It is a lot of hard work to learn voice leading deeply. It takes time and energy. But I believe that having that skill in your hands will help you to play and create music with much more musicality and with stronger melodic and harmonic sentences.
For more information about voice leading, contact me today.
Gal Dornay
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