Basic Tenor Banjo Voice-Leading

I had a great discussion on jazz improvisation with one of my tenor-banjo students the other day (thanks Bill!): He has been working hard to learn all sorts of scale and arpeggio patterns. He has now reached the point where he is concerned with connecting those patterns together, chord to chord. I’ve done a lot of work on writing out appropriate voice-leading exercises for plectrum tuning, but not for the tenor. This mini-lesson is my response to this discussion.

To begin with, let me say this about those dreaded scales: I cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance of learning and practicing them! They are the best and most important framework there is for jazz improvisation (for all types of music, actually). You may dread learning them (and they can seem like unnecessary drudgery), but you will never regret having done so after it’s all said and done. Try it, you’ll like it!

Secondly, I am using all 8^th notes for these exercises. You can of course use any combination of note values your ear calls for, but 8^th notes allow me to make several important structural points in a simple setting. This is not a race: play these as slowly as you need to in order to learn the lesson. At some point though, you should start to work up your speed; scales are the perfect vehicle for this.

Thirdly, in the interest of brevity and simplicity, I am skipping a whole bunch of background music theory and banjo technique here! I have to cover a little bit to make my point, but I have stopped well short of an exhaustive theory lesson.

Voice-Leading

“Voice-leading” is simply the act of playing from one chord to the next. When you play any chord progression, voice-leading is what allows you to make a smooth transition between the chords. It is the natural pathway that music follows to get through the chord progression (as outlined by Classical harmony and employed by the song’s composer). Most importantly, it happens whether you realize it or not.

If you learned the banjo using the chord melody method (as most of us did), you likely never learned proper voice-leading. You will struggle mightily trying to develop the single-string technique/knowledge necessary to jazz improvisation, unless you submit to scale study. Voice-leading and jazz improv are best and most directly learned through the study of scales.

So, what I have done here is to show the simplest form of voice-leading between a C chord and various common Dominant 7^th chords, using a basic scale as the pathway. This same basic idea can be used to connect any two chords together, in any inversion you may find them in. Just as chords have inversions, scales do too (as you’ll see in a moment). Again, scales are the perfect vehicle for this, but the same thing can be done with arpeggios as well. After you’ve learned it with scales and arpeggios, any scale/arpeggio-based jazz licks or patterns you can think of can be used.

You can also do it with well-written melodies; think of melodies as nothing more than embellished scales and arpeggios. Of course, those melodies have already been “voice-led” by the composer! So, studying melodies and their supporting chord progressions is another great exercise for learning voice-leading. Simplified banjo band arrangements are not the best way to learn it however: the original sheet music is always best. Only then can you know the composer’s original intent.

The note on the first beat of each measure is called a “target note,” and will be an important chord tone. It’s always best to hit as many target notes as possible, as this exercise does. 

Print out both of these PDFs and put them in your book. I have also included computer-generated MP3s of each example: