Voice Leading : The Science Behind a Musical Art by David Huron EPUB [EN]

"It's just a pity it's epub format, the most obnoxious readable format on the web".

In the super computers we have already managed to generate all the symphonies of 'Mozart, Beethoven' and other scores, and better, we can hear the 10th of Beethoven, based on the sketches that he himself made before die, we can also generate in a super computer the 'Mozart's' symphonies nº42 t until the nº100.

Well, every melodic part of music "works in the generic spectrum of two octaves", the rest is the result of good ideas or the limitation of counterpoint as a backdrop, but, deep down, everything is a consequence of harmony.

'Voice Leadin'g is something that every good musician should study, but most don't even know what it is, maybe it's the enchantment with the '9b chords, 13b chords' or both together.

Once a French musician came to show me a jazz 'sheet music', which he swore God had written, really the musical idea was good, but it could all be explained by 'Voice Leading' and a few basic concepts of harmony, of course He didn't understand, I showed him where the passing tones, neighbor notes, suspensions, and the most important in Jazz stuff were, that are anticipations and appoggiaturas and also syncopations.

But, the poor man preferred to believe that God wrote that simple melody over an old chord progression that has been used since the Baroque period. Believe, it's been 12 years passed by, and he's still picking corn, and playing some standards.

What a pity, because, the composer of that small and simple score certainly knew how to use all of this 'Voice Leading' stuff.

The melody is the consequence of a single base where everything dies, 'a single low note' that generates a large "marble stone" to carve.

The famous Italian artist "Michelangelo Buonarroti" said:

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

Based on this metaphor, Michelangelo did not sculpt marble, but freed a being that was imprisoned inside the rock.

We do the same thing with the 'harmonic series' marble, which naturally generates ready-made chords upwards and then we use the process results and make everything go back down again to the 'status quo'.
The more you delay this process with modulations to not tire human hearing, the longer it will be your song, sonata, quartet or symphony.

But, if you use the "natural rest notes of the chords", everything will be banal and boring, the ear will not be surprised, because the harmonic series is part of the human construction, believe me, if you have; 'envy, jealousy, anger, hatred, affection' , it also has the 'harmonic series' within your self and the WILL to solve everything 5th below.

All this limitation of these few resources we have to make music was saved by the tricks of 'tricking the ear', which are the basic ingredients of the 'musical magician', in fact, good musicians are magicians, they work with the art of trickery, hiding great tricks in their hat, for a conventional magician it could be named: 'Vision Leading', because the movements are faster than the eye is able to see.

The ear is even worse, slower still than sight. These hearing magicians, which we call composers, use tricks called "Voice Leading", which are just:
"passing tones, neighbor notes, suspensions, anticipations and appoggiaturas."
_Passing tones generate movement in the melody, believe there're simple rules to use, any idiot learns.
_Neighbor notes (bordaduras), visit your neighbors, go up and down, but, please come back. Some husbands and wifes escape. Escape is another term in 'Voice Leading'.
_ Suspension of something is the act of delaying, widely used by 'Bach' in the Baroque period until today. it's common practice is a "fourth above the next measure bass which delays to resolve to it's natural third". We do it a lot.
_Anticipations "can also be used" as syncopation, the note of the next chord can be anticipated in syncopation, "usually" to the next bar.