The Complete Idiot''s Guide to Music Theory

parts without doubling or duplicating other parts. Of course, writing a single
harmony part is also challenging, but in a different way; that single part has to
include just the right notes, suggesting the underlying chord without distracting
from the main melody.
For the purposes of learning basic theory, we’re going to concentrate on simple
two- and three-part backing harmony, without a lot of rhythmic or melodic
complexity. Once you master this type of rudimental harmony, you can expand
to include more complex types of vocal and instrumental backing.
Voicing and Inversions
The order of the notes of a chord (top to bottom) is referred to as the chord
voicing.
(It’s also called the chord 
inversion,
as you learned in Chapter 9.) Voicing
is very important when you’re writing harmony parts, because you have to
employ different voicings to avoid parallel motion between parts.

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Part 5:
Embellishing
Let’s consider the harmony you play as piano accompaniment. If you recall, we
used the following chord progression as an example back in Chapter 13:
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A common chord progression that needs harmonized.
As learned back in Chapter 13, a simple block chord piano accompaniment
(right hand only) to this chord progression looks something like this:
Simple block chord harmonies.
The triads you play as accompaniment represent three-voice harmony; you just
happen to play all three voices with one hand. All the chords are in the root
(noninverted) form of 1-3-5—which represents a problem. When you change
from chord to chord, all the harmony notes move in parallel to each other. In
terms of voice leading, this is often frowned upon.
It’s also boring.
You can prove this by isolating the top note of this chord accompaniment. Now
sing the succession of top notes as if you were singing backup vocals:
Isolating the top voice in the I-vi-IV-V chord progression.
Like I said: pretty boring—and not particularly melodic, either.
A better approach is to vary the voicings of the chords so that the harmony