TOPIC: What is voice leading?

I have a technical question. What is voice leading? Outlawsteph made reference to it awhile back, but didn't go into much detail. It sounds like you lead the chord change by picking out an individual note in the chord before strumming it?

Ah .. shall we say you are opening up a can of worms for a forum discussion? There is not a simple one sentence answer. Voice leading is a lesson or more, all in its own, based on the principles of harmony, chord structure, and scales.

However, here is a brief (although not comprehensive answer):

If I played an open C major chord on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd strings (only) on the guitar, I would be playing an E, C and G note respectively. If I changed that chord to an F chord, I would be fretting the 1st and 2nd strings at the 1st fret and the third string at the 2nd fret. I now am playing two new notes (E and A) and one common note (C). The notes of the F chord are F, C and A in order.

Both the C and F chords have a common note C. Two of the pitches (notes) of the C were raised to get to an F. The highest voice in C (the E note) was raised to an F. The lowest voice in the C chord (the G note) was raised to A. The C note was common and didn't change.

Instead of thinking of two separate chords, we maintain or retain the common tones and move in semi-tone or tonal increments the uncommon notes.

Confused yet? Good, because the next discussion would be about parallel movement, contrary movement, similar movement and counterpoint.

AGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! TMI! :

Tigerpaws wrote:
Silvia, whats wrong? Too much spicy Cajun food gettin to ya?
Dave, this sounds like composition tech. I would only need to know this if i were a song writer composing melody lines and wanted harmony within a given key.... i thought it may have been a playing technique.

Yes, I'm confused. Let me take an advil before you go on.

I actually got on Wikipedia.com and looked up some of the terms Dave spoke of. I think a class on music composition would cover those theories, and i don't think we would be doing much playing, but alot of listening!