How to voice lead a chord progression

[@DavidBennettPiano]

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[@wyattstevens8574]

There's a bot replying to some comments and trying to convince us it's you. Anyway, I have another song for your list of "songs based on classical music." I think Omega's Theme (from "The Bad Batch") is loosely based on THAXTED. (Holst's theme for "Jupiter")

[@benkendall5562]

I've played guitar for 13 years and have recently gotten into learning piano by taking theory and guitar voicings and transposing them, your videos really help with me understanding the piano 'language', thanks David! 🙂

[@graniteoverworld8955]

Oh hey, me too

[@ariaguitarlessons]

Me too . Love the explanation

[@michaelmiller6709]

I don't even play piano, yet follow this kids' videos simply because he is unmatched at explaining music theory. Such a talent.

[@loratoad]

Same here. I’ve gone from just playing my guitar to helping everyone workout parts, dynamics, transposing, arranging and more. It’s been a ton of fun. I’m not the lead singer but he’s starting relying on me to help his ideas come out musically. It’s a major step in my own progress.

[@Steveofthejungle8]

Ok this helped me understand the video context more, because as a piano player I was like “yeah this is how playing chords works” guess you don’t know what’s unique about your instrument until you learn about other ones haha

[@evedotcom]

It’s crazy how much better Clocks sounds with voice leading!! Great example. Thank you!

[@JonHarris77]

Good explanation of the advantages of smooth voice leading - less movement for your fingers and a smoother sound. There are disadvantages as well. The main one being you have to learn different chord shapes to do the inversions. With root position triads, you learn 12 different chords with essentially one shape. With the inversions, there are 36 with 3 shapes. I've found this can be tricky for beginners to learn, but it is certainly well worth doing.

[@pantone369c]

Voice leading is the most useful tool that is spoken about the least it seems. It can actually be especially handy for guitarists. I use it all the time when writing, letting the bassist carry the weight of the chord. I can use dyads and stay on the same 2 notes but the bass changes notes and the chord changes.

[@zachary963]

My first instrument is guitar, and I’ve always been kind of impressed with how the guitar is set up in such a way that the chords have kind of a built-in voice leading. Take a I V progression in G. If you play the G 320033 and the D like xx0232 like I do, then the high D stays the same, the high G is only a half step away from the F#, and the A falls a full step nicely to the G. Then in the bass voice, there is a solid and dramatic relationship of a fifth between the G and the D. If you’re playing with a bassist, then you can voice the D as 200232 or even x00232 and have the inverted chords. Same with V I in A: 022100 to x02220; or I V in F: 133211 to x32010. A lot of the voice leading is just built in. Jumping around is something that tends to happen in more angular and visceral genres like punk or metal (especially with power chords).

[@davequiquegg]

as a funk player, you can get some really good voicings with little-to-no-effort a bit further up the guitar and by sticking to 3 strings (adding the others in for inflection). Take D barred with one finger: xx777x. Add a finger and it's Bm: xx977x. Add another finger and it's G: xx978x. Add another finger and it's Em: xx998x. slide down 2 frets and you have C, Am, F, Dm. In fact, it works anywhere on the guitar, plus your fingers are able to do whatever you want for embellishments and runs as your fingers are already in position for a scale.

[@balazszsinkai9665]

Dude you choosed the best time to come out with these videos. I just bought a MIDI and started to teach myself to play on piano in december. After playing guitar for 13 years, it was kind of an easy start, and realized a lot of things by just thinking on it, but I always got some new info or idea from your videos as a beginner. Thank you David!

[@DavidBennettPiano]

Great to hear 😃😃

[@amonra73]

It's all becoming clearer and clearer. I can see in practice all the theory my piano teacher told me. Thank You David! Looking further of your videos!

[@rproctor83]

Your videos are great at making sense of the more complicated aspects of chord progressions. I don't play piano, but still this helps me tremendously with guitar and composition. Thank you!

[@lawrencetaylor4101]

I've known about voice leading for months, but this was one of the best demonstrations of what it really means. Thanks to the Beatles. BTW for any musicians suffering from pains from playing, I have my video out now. Oh My Aching Bach.

[@zakguitar2359]

I really love the visual format, really clean and intuitive

[@chenoaholdstock3507]

I suspect that a voice led tune played on violin (yes, yes, we rarely ever do anything close to chords, whatever) would sound fascinating, and is probably done a lot more than I've noticed. It's something I'm going to look out for, and try to write myself, too

[@zzzaphod8507]

The Bach cello suites have some voice leading within arpeggios.

[@bobjoe1343]

a pleasure learning from you sir

[@TheTimTraveller]

Brilliant stuff David. I never really considered WHY voice leading is so important even on an instrument that isn't, you know, the human voice. As so often with your videos, it's a concept I was vaguely aware of, but no-one has explained it so clearly to me before!

[@TimothyOBrien1958]

I've tortured myself trying to teach this to non-classically trained musicians. Once it clicks, it's amazing for them.

[@rickdeaguiar-musicreflecti7692]

Excellent tutorial on voice leading 😊 love your teaching style 👌

[@tobias530]

I recently learned how to voicelead on guitar, and let me tell you, I enjoy playing 10x more.. the possibilities! for me learning the triads on guitar got me on the trail to start to see the connections between them. can recommend triads!

[@krabeats1282]

great explanaition - thank you so much. Love your work David.

[@laner4195]

wow, I am also learning guitar and planning to make some song in my DAW and your explanation about voice leading and inversions make so much sense now. Always thought why invert notes when you already have a chord progression. + it helps in producing EDM music with dynamic range where you have lots of instruments. This video is worth a golden bar! Thank you!

[@atn_holdings]

my teacher showed me how to do this 2 months ago and it blew my mind. completely changed how I think about music, and now I just do it by reflex and it's tons of fun

[@drummermomcjs]

Great lesson David. This is really useful information to me. Having been self-taught on the keyboard, I have done this for years and didn't know that it had a name. I noticed as I was learning chords that they could be played in different positions and this realization helped me pick out the chord progression on Pink Floyd's song Thin Ice. It is nice to learn the technical name and the whole concept and reason behind it. I started on Drumeo and am thrilled to have access to Pianote, Guitareo, and Singeo as well. A valuable treasure trove of musical instruction for anybody who loves to make music. If you too have music that bubbles up in your soul, then I highly recommend Pianote as it is a most beneficial instructional tool.

[@southsideronnie]

Very cool David! Thank you!!

[@josephcassidy2789]

Amazingly simple explanation! So intuitive!

[@juniorm641]

This is why when I learned pop piano I decided to practice every chord and its inversions and master them before moving on to a new chord. After a few months of this. I naturally play smoother because I practiced inversions as if they were their own chords.

[@kennethweber2193]

Great video, I understand, but ALSO Clocks in a standard progression actually still sounds pretty interesting! :D

[@areku2017]

another great video! even though i know most of this stuff already, your videos are really pleasing to watch. keep it up 👍

[@DavidBennettPiano]

😃😃😃😃

[@ruzaiq100]

Brilliant! Thank you

[@DavidBennettPiano]

Thanks!

[@michaeleaster1815]

fabulous! It may have been the almighty algorithm but I recently saw a video that mentioned voice-leading and thought "man that's a hole in my knowledge"... then a new DB video. a great day

[@DavidBennettPiano]

😊😊

[@tommytam100]

Thank you for this video. Explanation is better than other similar videos of this topic.

[@bluenevla7874]

Thank you so much for this :)

[@jeffrey.a.hanson]

This is why every guitarist should learn basic piano accompaniment. It’s all so…black and white. 😌

[@mr88cet]

Great stuff! 6:00 - I think the even-more-more important things to remember about the bass are: - It defines the inversion of the chord, and - It must be its own melody line, interesting-sounding in its own right! Root-position chords sound especially stable, first-inversion is a bit more poetic, and second inversion is … tricky: Having the fifth in the bass gives the impression that it’s the root. A second inversion I-chord (AKA “one six four”) is generally considered “dominant-functioning.” So, it’s a little bit of an exaggeration to say that the bass is not involved in voice leading. You have to choose its pitches so that they make meaningful melody in their own right, and so that they give the chord the right underlying (literally!) feel

[@mr88cet]

@ghost mall, indeed! I described first-inversion chords as sounding “a bit more poetic,” so somewhat similar impression.

[@randyzeitman1354]

Fabulous.

[@J.D....]

Worth pointing out that not voice leading can be a choice - "feel" by Robbie Williams makes using all root position chords a part of its sound

[@TheHesseJames]

Those chords are basically next to each other anyway, so they are naturally "voice lead" in the root positions.

[@J.D....]

@@TheHesseJames yeah hearing it again it certainly not as prevalent through the songs as i remembered. But the Dm to Am change (and Am to Dm) in root positions was what i had remembered.

[@StarDarkAshes]

I’m a guitar player but I love this channel. So when you voice lead on a guitar it’s always going to sound better if a progression is voice led? Sometimes the easiest inversion to get to doesn’t always sound like the best choice to my ear.

[@Yupppi]

Voice leading kind of makes me think of it as "simplifying the chord progression as much as possible to push out the key difference inside". Philosophically that is, removing unnecessary positional changes to tease out that lead melody. So you'd catch the important part by just playing the lead notes without the chords, but the chords give the tonality due to 3rd and bass note. The arpeggiated melodies sort of highlight the voice leading in a way that it's easier to understand on guitar as well, when you follow the melodical idea more than just jumping on chords. However I think open chords are way more close to each other than say barre chords that are the easiest way to play any type of chords without thinking first, in my opinion at least. Most of the notes will be 1-2 half steps away at worst if not the same in open chords. And depending on your strumming you might even end up emphasizing just the notes that don't change in the chord. On top of that, guitar chords are almost by default inversions anyway, you struggle to find a basic chord where you get 1-3-5 notes in order. But it's not as satisfying as truly voice leading the guitar chords, that's for sure. I sort of view metal with power "chords" as dumbing it down even more to simply the bass line. But I wouldn't mind if a trend was born that brought voice leading to metal, there's certainly room for that in chord shells and vanhalenish ideas. In general 80's rock/metal had quite a bit more of voice leading or similar to voice leading. Which is in my opinion why it's way more pleasant to listen to than a lot of popular modern metal, due to filling the frequency spectrum with more balance, since a lot of today's metal is tuned low and vocals are also growling, ending up with very crowded lower spectrum and leaving a lot of emptiness to higher spectrum, making it exhausting. Opeth and Devin Townsend come to mind as counter-examples. Great video! Very helpful yet brief and simple.

[@jsw0278]

I thought open voiced guitar chords using open strings tend to be well voice led because they tend to not move common notes, they keep any open strings they can. Also sometimes it is good to have inversions with the bass line to get a nice smooth bass movement instead of it leaping around. You are right though that this can change the character of the progression.

[@transformationgeneration]

This kid would make a good music producer. Possibly, a great one. I suppose that would depend on both his imagination and his patience.

[@pabale4]

Thanks a lot!

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

Wow very cool! Is there less to worry about when using my piano roll? Will it all just work out if inverting the chords to get them to go in a a straight line?

[@donalsinnott4303]

I've watched iximusic explain "digital bath" by deftones. One super interesting thing I learned is that the vocalist is often singing on a "tense note" over the guitar chords (as she described it). He rarely sings the root note of the chord. Is that voice leading too or is there a different term for this?

[@Toto.Reyes16]

How about a video talking about vst's ? I just got a midi usb keyboard i want to exploit it as much as possible

[@k364k364]

Raise that first chord progression up a tone and you have Daft Punk's "Contact"

[@the1gip]

And now I've got Iggy Pop's The Passenger in my head 😅

[@paulembleton1733]

“…easy and sounds better”, I’m more, its easier so it might sound better because I’m a basic player. The un-inversion of the Coldplay progression sounded good to me, could be part of the song, and wondering about examples where inversions alone play the role of changing the feel of the song.

[@ariaguitarlessons]

Is it ok if I play the bass voice as the root and 5th. So Eb-Bb for Eb on left hand

[@Frahamen]

Poor Ringo

[@mrsharpie7899]

Someone who both has at least rudimentary knowledge of music theory AND appreciates Coldplay? But Tantacrul told me that was impossible!!!

[@JonHarris77]

Pedantic music theory guy here 🙂. Good video content, though I take issue with your definition of voice leading. It's not a binary thing, where either something is voice led or not voice led. Every set of chords has voice leading, it's just a matter of how smooth it is. It's also not a verb - you don't voice lead a chord progression. You can pay attention to the voice leading, or improve the voice leading, or ignore voice leading altogether.

[@soaribb32]

Me, I don't mind ambiguious chords, I would invert the bass if it sounded cool to me

[@MyMy-tv7fd]

algo-friendly comment

[@DavidBennettPiano]

also-friendly reply and thanks

[@liquidsolids9415]

I can’t really play keyboard but I’ve found this principle is also very useful for writing synth parts in the piano roll of a DAW. Thanks, David!

[@boomerdell]

Voice leading now makes a lot more sense to me. Guitar is my primary instrument, so when I learned about voice leading in a music theory course I took last year, I struggled at first. This is very helpful and solidifies my commitment to learn at least some basic, entry-level piano so I can get a better sense of these concepts. When I'm back on guitar, they are much more applicable now.

[@TheHesseJames]

Voive leading on guitar is more difficult than on Piano because you typically start - as David explains pretty well - with open chords and learning the various shapes for all the chords which is overwhelming in the beginning. Voice leading cannot be done with open chords and isn't that well visible on the guitar like on the piano.

[@cstanley3]

Yep. As a pretty basic guitar player I’ve the inability to voice lead frustrating. Literally just started using organ to get voice leading which makes it easier to write Melodie’s as well.

[@JackBealeGuitar]

It's fairly easy on guitar, take G to D, stick your thumb over the top to grab the F# on the low E, when playing the D (D/F#), they're all there, even if you don't go past the 3rd fret

[@VinceWhitacre]

Voice leading on guitar has always been easy for me... then again, I'm a pretty shit guitarist, always trying to find the easiest way to do something. Inversions are great, the fewer fingers I have to move is great... and hey, when you pedal on that one note, that's the voice leading of the progression. In open chords, think of Am-C-G. You've 2 notes in common between Am and C, then again between C & G. You only have to move one finger to go from A to C, then another from C to G. With inversions, it's easier than that. We often play those full 6 string open chords... but really, it's just the triad. You don't need those extra fingers. So if you play: x122xx that's an Am (E-A-C). Literally just lift up one finger: x102xx is a C (A-G-C). Now take your left hand completely off the fretboard and play those 3 strings again: x000xx is an inverted G triad (D-G-B). The thing that makes it tricky is we were taught as kids that "chords" were played on 4, 5, or even all 6 strings. If we get out of that mindset and focus on the triads, guitar is kinda made for simple voice leading.

[@TheSanpletext]

These videos make understanding and learning SO much easier. I hated music theory when I was younger, but if this is how I was taught I would probably succeeded way better and never lost my interest.

[@TheBshwckr]

finally i fucking understood this concept. i don't study music seriously but when people talked in videos about this i didn't get it but the explanation at the start was so clear.

[@DavidBennettPiano]

Great!!

[@UgoNwakanma]

You have officially made me a better composer! I had no idea

[@DavidBennettPiano]

🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@TheHesseJames]

After playing guitar for fourty years I now started also with the piano. It's interesting that playing chords is so much easier, playing scales is easier, voice leading is also so much easier, playing one note melodies over many octaves is easier. What is way more difficult for me is isolating the play between the left and the right hand.

[@Robert-gm8ig]

It's ok if you're struggling to learn it, it's important to just have patience, which can make a huge difference between being the beginner that you are now to being more advanced in the future.

[@WrynnCZ]

You can always slow down and play as fast as possible to make no mistakes. Then practice in this tempo for some time. After a while you will adapt, then its time to try a little bit faster and repeat same proccess. The trick is called muscle memory and it takes time to train it. You can also try to execrice yourself to use left hand instead of right hand during normal life chores (or vice versa if you are lefthanded). It disables "autopilot" in your head adn again, you train your muscle memory (on said left hand).

[@Noone-of-your-Business]

Love the keyboard visualization at the bottom. Great content as always. Thank you!

[@DavidBennettPiano]

Thanks 😊

[@gnyrinn]

I however don’t like the visualization. Not sure why, maybe it’s that keyboard is flipped from the one you’re playing at the bottom of your frame, thus creating a somewhat disjointed image.

[@lindadee2053]

This is a fantastic video! These voice-led inversions are almost magical in their power to produce the most pleasing progressions, and vice-versa. Removing them from Coldplay's "Clocks" actually destroyed the song. Amazing stuff you teach us!

[@hbofbyu1]

My favorite part is where David shows-off at the end of the video. :) Seriously, keep it up!

[@brianstevens8390]

This connects a lot of dots for me. Thank you, as always!

[@DavidBennettPiano]

Excellent!

[@robster7316]

Very interesting video. Not only does voice leading result in a smoother progression that sounds better, but a more efficient one, as well. A big advantage for piano players! Thanks. David!

[@lwa851]

I love that you explain things in terms of the performance itself, particularly with the example of people singing the individual notes of a chord. Too often, music theory just explains what's going on without explaining how it's going on. When you dig deeper, you realize that what sounds good is often what's more logical or "easy" for the musicians to perform. Great stuff and look forward to more videos!

[@satelliteimagerymusic]

Amazing video! I’d love to see a part two analyzing voice leading in The Strokes’ music. Frontman Julian Casablancas studied vocal voice leading in college and applied the concepts to pretty much every guitar riff of their first two albums. It’s amazing stuff, I’d love to see you break it down!

[@bikquerel2982]

I assume you are coming here after watching Matty Greg's videos. If not, I would definitely suggest you go watch them.

[@giantenemybird2687]

This is the best way I've ever seen this concept broken down. You explain HOW and WHY voice leading works when KZbin is oversaturated with WHAT to do. I've been a musician for 30 years... I am great at many aspects of composing and playing.. I can write great melodies..I pick out tasty chords.. and my I'm confident in how I arrange the structure of my songs... but I'll admit it... I've often fallen into the trap of picking out chords that work together, fit in key and sound great by themselves... only to feel like when I listen to the progression, it's like I'm chewing on food trying to make up my mind if I like it or not, and then at the end I say "it's ok" ... during this video it hit me that the voicing part is what I've been missing this whole time. In hindsight when I've been satisfied with a progression after playing around with the notes, it's because I used my ear to fumble into voicing it properly. I would be ashamed...if I weren't so excited to go revisit some tracks I've abandoned and also write some new ones! Thank you.

[@Blaert]

Loved the playing at the end. A nice treat after learning something useful!

[@iammaxhailme]

I do something similar on guitar. One song had a transition from Dm (xx0231) to G (320003) which I found hard, but instead I just used a different G (355433) because it lets me stick to that 3 on the B string. Makes it easier to do

[@urskakrumpak]

you could also play G as (320033)

[@Sandra-ps5we]

I just love your videos. Very well laid out and to the point which makes it so easy to understand. Thank you!

[@ikaray1775]

Hell yeah i was kinda struggling to un derstand what exactly voice leading is 😁 thank you so much david

[@lupo10]

You’re the best guitar teacher. Even though you play piano. You’re great, thanks 👍

[@DavidBennettPiano]

😃😃😃😃

[@therej5052]

Now that you mention the non-voice led songs, can you do a video on that? particularly with piano songs as well?

[@JustAFocus]

I'm just curious if there have been any studies that attempt to explain why, to human brains in general, minimizing the movements of notes in chord progressions is more pleasing than not doing that. Also, I've heard that melodies that jump around end up being less popular than melodies that limit themselves to only an octave or maybe an octave and a half. So you have a minimizing of movement in chord progressions and a limiting of the number of notes in a melody. So then, speaking very generally and broadly: Why do humans find limitations and minimizations more pleasing than the opposite? I just find that to be kind of interesting.

[@TheSanpletext]

This is how I would have wanted my music theory been teached to me. I have never played anything but drums, and last time was almost 10 years ago, but your videos make me want to learn to play piano or guitar. Keep up the good work!

[@mustuploadtoo7543]

You should do a video going through the types of articulation and performance techniques for different orchestral instrument using your teaching style, maybe going through a family of instruments at a time in a video (e.g. strings/woodwind/percussion).

[@Gonelmfaogoodluck]

Awesome video, really interesting. I've been doing this for ages, and just thought it was a normal thing, I had no idea it had its own special name. I would love to see a video breaking down some of the theory behind Au4's music. They're an incredible music group, probably my favourite of all time, and they only have 190 subscribers on KZbin. Their music include stuff like modal interchange, meter switches, and incredible composition and lyrics. Both of the guys have masters degrees in music composition, so I think it would be fun for you to check out. Again, excellent video, I love the channel.

[@leonhardeuler675]

Would like to see a video on IV -> I -> III -> vi, It's kind of the chord structure of you've got a friend in me from toy story. It sounds really smooth like the vi, IV, I, V at the start of this video but has this weird major three chord that doesn't match the key quite.

[@scottbrower9052]

I'm a beginning guitarist & I find your videos to be invaluable.

[@brain-thomas]

Funny thing is, I often do this when I'm noodling around on the piano, but it never occurred to me WHAT I was actually doing. Thanks for adding more knowledge about what I do 👍

[@tudocontra]

George singing the highest note in the example is a little bit odd to think of.

[@zenleek2129]

Thank you! I could never understand the why and details of voice leading

[@quailstudios]

That little jam you do at the end of this video is incredible. Loved it. :)❤ 12:52

[@quailstudios]

Good video David. Looking at the comments we can see that guitar players are having ah ha moments because of this video. Everyone needs to learn a little keyboard/piano. It really helps with understanding music theory.

[@colindayo]

NOW I get! Thanks so much Dave ❤❤❤

[@DavidBennettPiano]

Great 😊

[@wirezts]

"Sometimes there's a certain aesthetic that comes from a non-voice led chord progression". Yeh, seemingly John Lennon's piano songs 😅

[@wonderchild53]

Thank you very much, my Music Theory will improve when I hopefully have the chance to try this...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@krakentoast]

The waffle house has found its new host

[@naointeressa2251]

Sliding credits while he plays is a good idea

[@DavidBennettPiano]

😃😃

[@zzzaphod8507]

Outstanding stuff! Can get some really beautiful harmonies this way. Might be worth doing a follow-up video with some examples of 3-part harmonies that have voice-leading in actual voices, just Because.

[@DavidBennettPiano]

That’s a good idea! I’ll keep it in mind!

[@Thisismyletter]

Just commenting to say I love your videos. Always so informative while simultaneously being really captivating and engaging. You do such a great job, I’m so happy I found this channel :)

[@SamBrockmann]

Thing about guitar is, you actually can do voice leading. But few guitar players do that. Why? Because guitar players don't, as a general rule, like to think about inversions. They hear, "Play C7", and think of 1 shape for C7. Well, uhhhhh, guys, speaking as a guitar player, you can play C7 about a dozen different ways, right off the top of my head.

[@canonwright8397]

You should start trying to do interviews with Paul McCartney, Mery Spencer, and Billy Joel and stuff. I think if you asked them, they surely would come on the channel. 😋

[@cakemartyr5794]

Thank you very much for articulating and explaining what I've been trying to do!

[@DavidBennettPiano]

😃😃😃

[@zzzaphod8507]

You could've included as an example one of the "greatest" songs ever--near the end of "Rocky Raccoon", the part with the lead vocal singing "Gideon checked out", the chords are Amin7 D7sus4 D7 G7 C (as I recall), and the top backing vocal line gradually descends by steps: G G F# F E More care went into that than one might expect for such a silly song....

[@wirezts]

That Bb to A transition in Back to Black as you described sounded so French

[@kellydalstok8900]

Hi David, there’s a scammer pretending to be you hiding behind other people’s comments. They’re asking people to send them a message. I’ve reported them, and maybe you should too.

[@kristianburys160]

Singer can sing only 1 voice at once?: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rHScgpttZZ6al9U&ab_channel=Anna-MariaHefele

[@Scuba4Steve]

You don’t always have to move the D, but sometimes it’s helpful 😉

[@kennethbropson8019]

This is how I've played piano for decades! Who knew it had a name!

[@YingwuUsagiri]

The intro examples is exactly what I do for the Axis Progression to make it fun as a warmup. Couple of inversions and it's much easier to play and just improv silly stuff on top.

[@rebeccasarah2824]

what you speak about at the beginning is exactly how i was taught keyboard. now i’m in piano lessons trying to unlearn the habit of those chords! 😂

[@user-ix5qy7um6o]

I would definitely say this am f c g is best chord progression ever made in whole music history.

[@internetwizard404]

That first Am to F change sounds just like the opening to House of Cards by BTS lol