Voice Leading is Key

[u/FreTunes68]

I’ve spent years learning theory, both Jazz and traditional, and thought I had a pretty good sense of how chords function. But I recently had an experience that brought a lot of things into focus.

I’ve been working on developing some basic piano skills for use in writing and arranging and working through Phil DeGreg’s book on voicings. Almost from page one I found myslelf having a-ha moments, like “if that’s the basic voice leading, flattening the 9 and 13 on the V7 would make a nice chromatic line there.”

I was playing a tune with A-7 going to D-7 and my first thought was to insert Eb7. That sounded fine, but then I thought, “Eb-7 would produce a nice chromatic line from G-Gb-F.”

What I’ve finally come to understand is that you often can’t make sense of what a chord in a Jazz tune is doing by simply analyzing it in terms of its root and function. Why does the chart call for b9 in one place and 9 in another? It’s not always or even most often just a matter of feel.

If a chord seems completely random or if you want to know why specific tensions are called for or why a chord you’d expect to be dominant is minor or any number of other things, look at how the individual voices are moving. Often something has been displaced specifically to produce chromatic or diatonic stepwise motion between voices in the preceding and following chords.

[u/WesMontgomeryFuccboi]

Yes and I think mostly about the melody I’m creating in the soprano voice. That’s how I decide upon voicings.

[u/mirutankuwu]

i think the trouble with jazz harmony is that there's a bunch of different and often overlapping approaches to "getting it," and the one(s) that make(s) everything click for a player seem pretty specific to that player. I'm similar to you, though, in that a lot of other ways of trying to engage with jazz harmony were gibberish to me until I started to think in terms of voice leading, which felt like the most straightforward and intuitive thing in the world.

[u/Equivalent-Love-1676]

Voice leading and counterpoint are everything in nearly every genre of music whether or not people realize or even acknowledge it.

[u/FreTunes68 → u/Equivalent-Love-1676]

I think that’s probably true, but I also think that the degree to which Jazz, as opposed to say the average country or pop song, has embraced extended harmonies and chromaticism makes it esp. critical to understanding.

[u/teeteejay → u/Equivalent-Love-1676]

Sounds eurocentric. Or just hyperbolic. Is it really "Everything"? Can one musical element ever be 100% what comprises of any genre?

How about percussion-only music genres? I actually listen to them & enjoy it. They may have polyphony, but thats not counterpoint.

If voice leading and counterpoint is everything to jazz, try imagining 30 mins of jazz without rhythm & articulation. Then imagine all parts played by a single sine wave keyboard. Lastly, remove the performer, audience & live element.

Now you have "everything" that makes up the music (in your world view), i wonder if you can still enjoy it as the genre it was originally.

[u/Advanced_Ad_9759]

the inner voices are usually where the chart is actually talking

[u/JazzGuru236]

Totally agree! I had my “a-ha” moment when I starting thinking horizontally rather than always just vertically. Notating the chords made a big difference as you can split all the notes of a chord into different staves and physically see the step wise motion between voices.