7. Voice Leading: How to Connect Chords Beautifully While Bringing Variety to Your Playing

LESSON PREVIEW

I always love teaching this lesson because it's a way for students to go beyond copying, and move very gently into creating. With the tools you'll acquire here, you'll be less dependent on others. From now on, you are your own arranger.

The subject is voice-leading, and here's how it fits into the larger scheme of things.

As you know, to play songs from chord charts, you need several skills. One is being able to recognize chord symbols. We've covered that in a separate tutorial.

In a separate lesson, I also showed you how to practice chords and their inversions systematically, so they're instantly available.

But there's another essential -- being able to connect one chord to the next in a way that sounds great, and allows you to physically transition between chords easily.

This is voice leading. It will give you options so you can create variety within your arrangements and keep your music sounding fresh.

And really, all you need to know are three basic guidelines.

Before we're done, I'll give you a creative exercise to help you master this aspect of playing. And I'll have some thoughts on applying what you're learning, to songs you already know.

I think you're gonna enjoy this, so let's get started.

• • • • • • • • • •