Voicings are series of chords in which underlying melodies can be heard. They are not specific to Manouche in any way but since they are used, I chose to talk about them a little. A know voicing example is the theme for Cherokee (midi file). Just like improvisation, there are zillions of ways to do voicings. In guitar, most voicings are played on three or four notes that go along the harmony of the tune. There are also widely used to vary the accompaniment, especially while other instruments are improvising (therefore with a low volume and often in the high pitch to leave leeway to the instrument playing the bass notes), but also in guitar choruses richer than those played with single notes. This aspect of improvisation is probably one of the most complex to begin with since several simultaneous improvisation notes must be thought of, or rather one note for the melody and several notes for the underlying chord, often with inversions. However, just like anything else, there are tricks that make the whole thing easier. As usual, if you do your homework steadily, a voicing chorus will be played with less tension: you have to know a few typical chords sequences and integrating other people's voicing choruses prove vey helpful too. The important step before "feeling" that a chord will sound good on the melody is to start associating the chord sound to its visual shape on the neck. Well, at least it is the way I work now. The goal is that one should mentally hear the sound of the chord before fretting it. This learning curve is quite steep but in the end, I believe it can become more or less natural. For the time being, I'm not there yet so when I'm running short of ideas, I just dig in my toolcase: chord scales, shamelessly stolen voicings, elaborations on a chord (as Angelo Debarre would put it), ...

It should be pinpointed that often, it's the highest note of the voicing that sings the melody. Well not always...