Isabel McNeill Carley

Recorder Improvisation and Technique Book Three: Advanced - Composing, Arranging, Analysis Isabel McNeill Carley

Recorder Improvisation and Technique Book Three is for the advanced student who already plays both C and F recorders. Picking up where RIT Two leaves off, RIT Three embarks on a grand exploration and appreciation of a wonderful musical mix. Take songs of Medieval Europe, blend Indonesian and African layered subtleties of melody and rhythm, then add in North America's musical traditions, and individual improvisation. The third volume, although specific to recorder, is equally applicable to the musical development of any vocalist or instrumentalist... Carley deftly guides the player through scales, melodic ornamentation, decoration of the third, canons, chord changes, descant creation and free improvisation. She includes many fine musical examples, but the focus is the emphasis on improvisation leading to composition in the forms that parallel the history of Western music. Leslie Timmons, American Recorder

Recorder Improvisation and Technique Book Three shifts the emphasis away from basic recorder instruction. These lessons focus in detail on how the Orff-Schulwerk Volumes basic sequence can be applied successfully to recorder teaching and playing. The improvisational and compositional techniques in RIT Three are then readily transferable to other instruments and the voice.
Compositional forms are explored with improvised materials using major, modal, and minor scales, as well as dominant and subdominant bass lines and improvised melodies. Historical, traditional, and contemporary approaches to harmony are considered, combined with improvisations using Organum, Faux Bourdon, heterophony, shifting chords, descants, and more. A final chapter explores improvisation for movement, free solo improvisation, and group improvisation.