192 Par t 5:Embellishing
Making Harmony Parts More Melodic
Of course, you’re not limited to having your voices follow the strict chord pat-
tern. What if we start swapping the top two notes of our harmony between two
different voices? There are lots of ways to do this, but one particularly good-
sounding one looks like this:Swapping a few notes between the top two harmony parts.See what we did here? We swapped the second and fourth notes between the
parts, so that the first part now goes G-E-A-D, and the second part goes E-A-
F-G. You’re still representing all the notes in the chord, but you’re making each
individual line more melodically interesting.
A good tip when you’re creating either vocal or instrumental harmony is to
physically sing each part yourself. If the part is boring or hard to sing, consider
different inversions or swapping notes between parts. The best harmony parts
sound great on their own!Voice Leading
Voice leading is what you get when you follow one harmony part from start to
finish; the different intervals between the notes follow a set of conventions and
act to create a pseudo-melody out of the harmony line. You have to make sure
that one note properly leads to the next to avoid having the harmony line sound
like a bunch of totally unconnected tones.It’s helpful to think
of a chord progres-
sion as nothing
more than a group
of simultaneous melodies.
This will help you create
singable harmony parts,
as opposed to parts that
correspond only to notes
within the underlying
chord structure.TipIf you follow these voice-leading conventions, you’ll create chord progres-
sions that sound good in both popular and classical music. When you’re
working in the popular and jazz styles, however, you’ll discover that you
can be a lot freer with your voice leading; let your ear guide you to
what works best.Tip