Harmony / Counter Melody for tunes

fh041205

Has anyone any experience doing this. I'm not even sure what the correct term is. I play whistle and when you get a few whistle players in the same session playing it would be nice to be able to sort of harmonise the tune you know??

I mean like finishing with an F for a tune in D and the like. Sometimes I can pick out some sort of counter-melody but I'd like to see more of it online. I watched a video of Gerry O'Connor doing this magnificently, I'll link it here to show what I'm on about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC3eG7VLzpg

Futurecrook

It's just playing in harmony. Most people doing it are just improvising around 3rds/5ths. If you can find any videos of grupai cheoil on youtube then you might get a few ideas, as that's what that competition in the fleadh is about.

Tom Doorley from Danú is great for doing this kind of stuff, especially when he plays with the group live, so you could find a few examples in their playing too.

Blade

I suppose the most basic would be to go two notes up or two down on your whistle. Depends the tune and which sounds better. You can go two down even if the tune's lowest note is D, you just play the exact same notes as them for the ones you can't go below. I think it stands out better when you're doing it with two of the same instrument, 2 low or 2 high whistles.

With certain tunes you can even play the other part of a tune, like play the second part while everyone else is doing the first part. It can get more complicated of course, doing runs or even just chords. Only learning all this myself recently, luckily for me a friend of mine arranges harmonies for one of the worlds top pipe bands

Some nice harmonies, a bit of everything going on here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvsLavEdV6E