Let’s take our voice leading concept a step further and look at a simple 2 note phrase that we can shift around in minor 3rds: 

As before, we’re looking for the natural voice leading as we resolve to the I chord: 

• A resolves down to the 3^rd of D

• C resolves down to the 5^th of D

• E could either resolve to the 7^th  of D (the “common tone”), or – as I’ve done – to the root, which creates a nice enclosure idea (careful not to resolve to the C natural at the 8^th fret!) 

• F# resolves down to the root 

Use my example solo as a guide and then see what ideas you can come with.

We can easily extend this into a 4-note phrase: 

As you can hopefully see and hear, in every instance we’re naturally gravitating towards a strong chord tone of D major 7.

When trying this out yourself, you could also experiment with resolving slightly early, perhaps on the 8^th note before the D major 7 – look out for this in my example solo.