Voice leading gets a bad rap as the thing your harmony teacher droned on about while you were busy daydreaming about sweep picking. But here's the secret: it's the laziest, most satisfying party trick on the guitar — changing chords while barely moving your fingers, and looking very smug about it.
This one-minute drill runs minor triads around the circle of fourths on the top three strings (E, B and G), gluing each chord to the next with the smallest possible hand movement. It's exercise #21 in my voice leading series, and yes, your pinky will send a thank-you card.
How minor triad voice leading actually works
Here's the whole secret: when you move from one minor triad to another a fourth away, the two chords already share notes, and the rest only need to shuffle a fret or two. Instead of leaping to a fresh inversion clear across the neck, you pick the shape of the next chord whose notes sit closest to the ones you're already fretting. On the top three strings you've got all three inversions of every minor triad stacked in one tidy little region, so you just glide between them.
The practical takeaway: don't think "next chord," think "nearest note." Fret a minor triad, then for the next chord in the minor sequence, move each voice to the closest chord tone above or below. Do that around the whole circle of fourths and your comping stops sounding like a series of unrelated grabs and starts sounding like one smooth, connected line.
Voice leading, it turns out, is just laziness with a music degree — and I've built an entire career on it. Grab the PDF and Guitar Pro file over on my Patreon.