Last week we covered the basics of controlling dissonance between voices, but there's a lot more to (good) void leading. Today we'll be looking at voice independence which is what really gives older styles of music their distinct sound and complexity. The concept of voice leading is simple enough. Keep voices sounding distinct from one another in their own range, or occasionally crossing each other. However, in practice it's a topic that can cause a lot of heart ache for theory students because, at least in the beginning, there are a lot of rules that must be followed. A lot of these rules become guidelines later on, especially in the cases such as doubling, hocket, octave displacement, etc. That being said, the goal here isn't necessarily to follow strict voice leading rules, but to work towards some best practices.