Voice-Leading

You mean practise voice leading as in making individual guitar parts to be played together?

Some tips are:
Keep the number of voices to a minimum - 2 or 3 parts is about as much as most people can handle on guitar.

Try to make each voice melodic, so that even without the others it still sounds good.

Follow the standard rules of harmony/ counterpoint. If you have a dissonant interval, such as a tritone, resolve it in the expected way unless you're going for a special effect.. (A tritone most often either expands outwards by step to a minor sixth, or contracts inwards to a major third).

And other stuff like that :D

I'm sorry if I wasn't that clear. I was referring to voice-leading in a chord progression...any way i'm interested in your post..what do you mean by guitar parts?
last but not least.. what is a good book in Harmony and counterpoint that you would recommend besides Piston's mammoth Harmony book?

Avoid parallel motion, parallel fifths...

I'm sorry if I wasn't that clear. I was referring to voice-leading in a chord progression...any way i'm interested in your post..what do you mean by guitar parts?
last but not least.. what is a good book in Harmony and counterpoint that you would recommend besides Piston's mammoth Harmony book?

We're talking about much the same thing. The parts (or voices) are the notes of chords looked at horizontally instead of vertically. If you play a succession of four string chords, it can be imagined as four singers, each singing a separate melody, but at any point in time the voices of the four singers combine to produce a chord.

In polyphonic music, the individuality of each part is very important and voice leading is the method used to connect the notes of each part. Chords progressions in polyphonic music are just a by-product of individual melodies combining - like a barber shop quartet, or a string quartet.
This is the effect you hear in baroque music such as by Bach. But it's very difficult to have four individual parts played on a single guitar - two is normal, with some inner harmony notes to fill it out.

In homophonic music - the individual parts aren't as important (or even don't exist). What's important is the harmonic effect of the chords. This is exactly the effect you get when strumming chords. There is virtually no voice leading involved, we just connect any chord shape to any chord depending on the harmonic flavour (or for ease of playing) we want, regardless of what just came before.

The best modern music contains elements of both approaches.

A book on harmony and counterpoint (apart from Piston) is Foundations of Practical Harmony & Counterpoint (Paperback) by R.O Morris - but I still think Piston is better - not so dry.

Now everything makes sense !!! Thank you so much Fretsource!

and DemoETC...why this parallel fifths are forbidden? thanks!

Nothing's really 'forbidden' actually. ;)

Parallel fifths can be used for certain effects. It's present in, say, a rock progression using power chords, where you're basically holding the root-fifth(-octave) fingering and moving it to the various frets. I believe in older music it was avoided because it's such a strong, obvious sound in itself and moving fifths stand out Sometimes you want that, sometimes you don't.

It depends on what period of music you're trying to write in.

cool! thank you again :)

i'll definitely consider buying this Piston book... abit expensive (the prize of 5 or 6 instructions books)..but I think it's one of its kind.

cool! thank you again :)

i'll definitely consider buying this Piston book... abit expensive (the prize of 5 or 6 instructions books)..but I think it's one of its kind.

Although it's a highly respected book, it might not be your best option. It deals with standard four part harmony using orchestral and keyboard examples, and focuses on the common practice period of classical composition at a level that's often not relevant to modern day guitar playing.
If you're looking for guitar related information on chord progressions, voice leading and harmony, etc., then NoteBoat's book would be more useful, simply because its content is far more relevant, and can be applied directly to your guitar practice.

I appreciate the plug, but my book doesn't touch on voice leading at all. It's a basic theory primer, so it chord structures and basic cadences is as far as I go.

For guitar-based voice leading, I'd recommend the following:

Start by thinking in terms of the top note; that's the one that 'cuts through' the most. A decent start is a 50+ year old book, "Melody Chord System" by Mel Bay. Although it deals only with basic triads and seventh chords, it does so across keys, showing you how to work non-harmonic tones into the soprano voice.

When you're ready to start playing with the internal voices of chords, start by reading Johann Joseph Fux' "Gradus ad Parnassum" (Steps to Parnassus - Parnassus was the Greek mountain where the muses lived). It's a short book, written as a set of dialogues between a master composer (Aloysius) and a student (Josephus). Fux put it together by studying the counterpoint of Palestrina, and it takes you step by step from the rules of two-voice motion through writing four voices in florid counterpoint.

It's a short book, and an easy read. But work through the exercises yourself and you'll get a great deal out of it - just like Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and countless others did. With an understanding of the 'rules' of voices moving against each other you're in a much better position to make decisions on how to voice your chords.

Excellent Noteboat!! I'll follow your tips !

And thanks for the clarification regarding your book !..I was reviewing it completely again, specially trying to find those 'hidden pages' just to find this mention of voice leading. :)

Parallel fifths aren't forbidden, it is very common to end and start on a P5 for example. However parallel motion is 'forbidden'. In counterpoint you want each voice to have a distinct melody, if you keep using the same intervals then it's not counterpoint but harmony, you can't call Green Day counterpoint. A very nice book on this is Gradus Ad Parnassum, from Fux IIRC.

Thanks again for the clarification between conterpoint and harmony...by the way Fux is on my way :)
PS: I found an old Rimski Korsakov on Harmony..so Piston will wait a bit more :)

My style of voice leading is precisely the opposite of Note's ... I look at base motion first and foremost as, in my mind, that carries the harmony. Melody can jump about a bit and sound ok . .

NEXT I look at Noteboat's advice and make sure the melody notes flow. Then i worry about the inner voices.

This is a case where I think all roads lead to Rome :)

believe or not, this thread is what I was looking for months..that you guys would bring your experience here so someone like me could experiment in choosing voicings with more resources in mind (starting with the top note or the base, or in between).
thanks for your input kingpatzer.