Descants

My strategy for creating pleasing descants for the provided melodies was to first decide which chord the melody was derived from at any given point, and then take my descant notes from the same chord, aiming for contrary motion where practical and possible and to create a descant that would sound pleasant on its own, as well as complimenting the given melody.

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For the exercises I chose instruments from the same family that I thought would make nice contrasts, and for the second descant added snare drum percussion. In each of the descants I tried to be more active when the melody was more static and vice-versa, which I think worked to good effect. I also made use of imitation, especially in the third descant, as I feel this brings consistency to the piece between the instruments.