What is Voice Leading?
The term “voice-leading” refers to the way a line of music moves up and down. (It is also sometimes called “part-writing”.) Voice-leading helps us to answer the question “which note should come next in each part?”
A note can move to the next one:
- by step (interval of a 2nd)
- by a leap (interval of a 3rd or greater) or
- by a unison (repeated note),
Stepwise movement is also called “conjunct” movement. It is the most common type of movement. Movement by leaps is called “disjunct”. We will learn more about these in the next unit. The best type of movement to use will to a large degree depend on which part you are writing.
In a melody, or in the soprano part, the tune will move mostly by step, but usually not entirely by step, as this can become uninteresting, so a few other intervals will also normally be used.
In a bass line, the bass tune also moves quite a lot by step, but there are also normally a large number of wider intervals, such as 4ths, 5ths, or octaves.
The inner harmony parts, (such as alto and tenor), tend to move much less. These parts will often use repeated or held notes, or only move by steps or thirds most of the time.
Try this exercise. Pick up the sheet music of something you are currently working on, and look at the intervals used in the tune. Try to work out what percentage is conjunct movement, and how much is disjunct. If it’s an avant-garde piece, you will probably find quite a lot of disjunct movement, but for most classical, folk and pop, the majority is usually conjunct.