Music Video Lesson: The Secrets of Voice Leadings in Music

Welcome to VirtualSheetMusic.com and LivingPianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin with a great subject today, Secrets of Voice Leadings. What's this all about? Voice leadings apply to so many different styles of music. I thought this would be of interest to many people. Well, voice leadings, when you play a chord, you have a choice of inversions and voicings. Jazz artists are absolute masters of this in the hands of great players. And yet, it is also in the classical world.

Now, voice leadings refers to how each note of a chord modulates to the next chord, and each note within the chord, where that note goes to the next chord. It all goes back to choral writing. After all, all music is based upon the human voice. To go back to Bach chorales, for example, in the classic four-part writing, there are strict rules that we have ascertained by the writing of these masters back then. That throughout history, people have emulated in styles that came after. So, here's the good news for you, voice leadings are actually an extremely simple subject. I'm gonna break it down for you right now.

Now, in scale degrees, if you call the first note one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, going up the scale. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. If you have a note within the key, it's very simple. Listen very carefully. Here it is for you. Two goes down to one, four goes down to three, six goes down to five, and seven goes up to eight, and sometimes or, seven goes down to five, for a good voice leading to avoid parallel fits and such. That's it, two to one, four down to three, six down to five, and seven up to eight, and occasionally down to five, just to make things work out nicely for you.

Now, what about accidentals? Well, that's not so hard either. In during the key of C major, it's very easy to conceptualize. Sharps go up, flats go down, very simple. If you're in another key, however, it's not necessarily sharps that go up, it's any raised note that goes up, and any lower notes go down. In other words, if you have a flat in your key signature and then that note has a natural, that is a raised note, and that would resolve upward. If you have a sharp, likewise, if it's a natural, that would resolve downward.

That is the whole secret of voice leading in a nutshell. Can you believe it's that simple? Try it in your music, if you're improvising, if you're carving out chord changes from a lead sheet. Notice your scores of Classical music, how beautifully crafted, whether, it's Bach, Mozart, Chopin, it doesn't matter. These are universal rules that apply to music. Why? Because, they sound good. It has to do with active tones resolving to restive tones. And that's the whole story of voice leadings for you. That's for joining me. Robert Estrin here from VirtualSheetMusic.com and LivingPianos.com

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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