Improvising a descant

thewesleyan · Post by **thewesleyan** » Mon Nov 25, 2002 8:49 am

I took my whistle to church yesterday, and had a good time playing along with some the hymns. Nobody threw anything, which is praise enough for me! It has to be said, though, that even with a microphone I wasn't much competition for the pipe organ. One of the hymns had a descant part, so I "took the bull by the horns" and played that, and felt that it added something to the experience, despite the occasional wrong note.
So to my question. Does anyone have any hints on how a descant part might be improvised if a written descant is not available?

(Apologies in advance if this has cropped up before - I couldn't find anything when I searched)

SteveK · Post by **SteveK** » Mon Nov 25, 2002 8:59 am

Chris Smith has some material on improvising countermelodies at his site. I don't know whether it would help you or not. It's mainly for accompanying instruments such as bouzouki. The article is called "impcontr"-9th from the top. I took my whistle to church too. I used a Gen C to play in F. That whistle is a tuning disaster. The band didn't have to compete with an organ, fortunately. I played the dulcimer on others though and that was OK. Here's Chris's page:

http://www.geocities.com/coyotebanjo/instruction/

Steve

thewesleyan · Post by **thewesleyan** » Mon Nov 25, 2002 10:26 am

That looks like a very helpful resource - thanks!

SteveK · Post by **SteveK** » Mon Nov 25, 2002 2:27 pm

You might also find this a little useful. Lee Konitz is a great jazz alto saxophone player and teacher. He has developed a 10-step method of teaching improvization. I could only find one web page of it though and it's minimal. You have to infer most of the steps from the written example.

http://www.melmartin.com/html_pages/Int ... onitz.html

Steve

thewesleyan · Post by **thewesleyan** » Mon Nov 25, 2002 5:50 pm

Thanks again. It could just be the lateness of the hour here, but that last link looked a tad bemusing. I'll look again tomorrow. I appreciate your help.

cowtime · Post by **cowtime** » Mon Nov 25, 2002 9:42 pm

I've found that if a hymn does not have a descant that is realistically playable (as in too many half-holes quickly) I can either play one of the other lines-alto,tenor - or-
sometimes I can come up with an alternate tune in my head that will go just fine. Also, I've found when playing with the organ, if I go up an octave, everyone can hear the whistle just fine since really high pitched sounds will carry over the lower tones, no matter how loud the organ/choir is.
(a lesson learned in band many years ago, you can hear that picolo over everything else.)