COMPOSITION STEP 6: INVERT YOUR CHORDS, AND DEVELOP RHYTHMIC INTEREST

Now that you know how to write and identify inversion, invert some of the chords in your chord progression so that they're 'voiced' close together - with as little movement between each chord as possible. 

Once you've got your chord progression sounding the way you want it to, write out parts for the 'inner voices' (these are the parts that sit between your melody and your bass line). 

Start by creating an extra part or two - in my example so far I've used violin and douple bass, so I'm going to add viola and cello (violoncello) to make a standard string quartet.

The easiest way to write for these parts is to simply get them to play a homophonic role; and give each instrument the 'missing note' from each chord, using the technique of choosing one note per chord). Because we've only used 3-note chords, and we have 4 string parts and a piano in our band, sometimes we will need to 'double' a note from one of the other parts. This is usually most effective if it's done in a different octave (so you can double the bass note up an octave, or your melody note down one octave)

The simplest way to do this is to just write your chord voicings as semibreves, but it's probably going to sound much more effective if you incorporate rhythmic patterns into these lines.

In the above example, I've inverted the Gm chord in the piano part, so that the 'D' is at the bottom of the chord (2nd inversion). I've also written simple parts for viola and cello (just one note per chord, taken from the piano voicings) and created some rhythmic interest (you could think of this a little like writing a strumming pattern for a guitar). The viola part moves in disjunct motion between bars 1 and 2, and conjunct motion between bars 3 and 4,