chord sequence

Alex,

You've got the idea of parallel movement.  The purpose of Serickso's resolution is to avoid the parallel 5ths.  The resolution I used in the post above includes a parallel fifth, but in the lower voices -- it gets sort of buried, and sounds ok (your ears tend to focus on the top notes -- with some exceptions, on the guitar I focus primarily on the top note of the chord for smooth movement, and then choose from the available voicings according to how practical the fingering is -- you don't get a lot of time to figure out what sounds good when you're reading a chart).

Having an understanding of what the German 6th is, and knowing what chord you want to directly resolve to, it would probably be profitable for you to work out your own resolution at this point.  Here's what I suggest:

1. Write out the notes of German 6th
2. Figure out several inversions of the chord
3. Repeat steps 1 & 2 with the V chord you're resolving to
4. Write out each pair of inversions -- you'll have a bunch of pairs (if you have four voicings of each chord, you'll have 16 pairs), and look at what's happening to each voice -- at this point you'll reject a bunch of pairs as having impractical melody lines between the two chords
5. Look for parallel fifths in the chord pairs that remain.

Doing this may lead you to some new conclusions, and I'd be happy to critique the results.

Tom

so like any parallel motion is just the same interval played and then moved

A, D

then

D G.

an interval of a perfect fourth, then moved up a fourth.

Exactly, and the way to avoid it is voice leading.

Instead of 2 parallel movements:

A ---> D
D ---> G

You would simply:

A ---> G
D ---> D

Voice leading is using the minimum movement to form the new chord.   This was thought vastly more elegant and was the rule in classical music and jazz.  People disregard it a lot nowadays.

On the guitar, it happens pretty naturally with open chords, but not with barre chords or other movable shapes.

ahh, thanks Helgi!

so even if it doesnt matter swaping alto/tenor/soprano/bass as long as there is the least movement between voices it sounds nicer AND avoids parallel motion.

i see the light now :)