The Complete Idiot''s Guide to Music Theory

parts don’t have to move in parallel.
For example, you might keep the C chord in its normal root position, but
change the Am to the first inversion (C-E-A), the F to the second inversion 
(C-F-A), and the G to the first inversion (B-D-G), like this:
Inverting the chords to vary the internal voicings.

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Chapter 15:
Harmony and Counterpoint
191
Not only does this make the chord progression easier to play (all the notes are
closer together on the keyboard) it also makes any individual part easier to sing.
Take the top note part again: Instead of moving G-E-C-D as it did originally, it
now moves G-A-A-G, like this:
The new top voice harmony part, thanks to revoicing the chords.
The voice is fairly consistent, now; it doesn’t jump all over the place like it did
before. And if you check out the other voices, you find that they’re also a lot
more singable. (The middle voice moves E-E-F-D, and the bottom voice moves
C-C-C-B.)
When you write out each of these parts separately, you use three different
staves, like this:
The succession of root position, first inversion, second inversion is fairly
common—and one you can apply to any number of chord progressions.
(Also common is the succession of first inversion, second inversion, root
position.)
Tip
Three-voice harmony—on three different staves.
These principles apply when you’re playing piano accompaniment; they also
apply when you’re writing vocal or instrumental harmony parts. If you vary the
voicings, you open up a lot of possibilities as far as which voice goes where.

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Part 5:
Embellishing
192
Making Harmony Parts More Melodic
Of course, you’re not limited to having your voices follow the strict chord pat-
tern. What if we start swapping the top two notes of our harmony between two
different voices? There are lots of ways to do this, but one particularly good-
sounding one looks like this:
Swapping a few notes between the top two harmony parts.
See what we did here? We swapped the second and fourth notes between the