Year 8 — Music

Term 1 & 2: Blues music

History and musical structure of Blues music.

Students will study the history of Blues. They will analyse the Blues' structure. They will learn how to aurally identify and also perform the 12-bar blues chord structure and the 12-bar Blues walking baseline. They will perform a Blues tune. They will also learn how to perform the blues scale, improvise on their own and as a member of a Big Band. They will compose a piece based on the 12 bar blues, including improvisation.

Blues scale and Improvisation.

Students will study the history of Blues. They will analyse the Blues' structure. They will learn how to aurally identify and also perform the 12-bar blues chord structure and the 12-bar Blues walking baseline. They will perform a Blues tune. They will also learn how to perform the blues scale, improvise on their own and as a member of a Big Band. They will compose a piece based on the 12 bar blues, including improvisation.

Perform a Blues chord structure, blues Bass line and Blues melody and compose/improvise a melody to go with the 12-bar blues structure previously performed.

Blues music

Blues is a music genre[2] and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs & spirituals.

  • Spiritual
  • Moral
  • Social
  • Cultural

Develop the individual:

Students develop an understanding of how major historical events can influence the development of music.

Create a supportive community:

It shows how people turned something negative into positive. How inspiration to be creative can derive from life's negative events and misfortunes.

Term 3 & 4: Battle of the bands

Form music groups, select appropriate material and perform to a live audience.

Students will work on their confidence and learn how to select appropriate team members in order to form successful partnerships and work towards the ultimate goal, which is to learn a song from notation and aurally, rehearse it as a band and then perform it to a live audience.

Perform with accuracy as a member of a musical ensemble, whilst maintaining your own part.

Arrangement

Arrangement is a musical reconceptualization of a previously composed work. It may differ from the original work by means of reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or development of the formal structure.

  • Spiritual
  • Moral
  • Social
  • Cultural

Develop the individual:

It gives an individual the responsibility to select roles within a group and makes him/her accountable of his/her own actions and decisions.

Create a supportive community:

How our own decisions and actions, affect us and others, around us.

Term 5: Simple Variations - Major & minor scales

Students will be introduced to the scales of major and minor. They will be making links between the way letters, words and sentences are put together in order to make meaning and the way notes are chosen to coexist in specific order to form musical sentences and create emotion.

Students will learn how to perform Major and Minor scales and understand their musical impact in a piece of music. They will aurally identify scales across a range of musical styles.

They will be asked to memorise names of composers from a variety of genres.

Students will be able to identify major and minor scales, aurally, in pop, rock and classical music and identify changes in key, when they occur.

Create a set of 4 variations of a short melody by Jean-Philippe Rameau, using a number of standard compositional techniques.

Scales

A scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. A scale ordered by increasing pitch is an ascending scale, and a scale ordered by decreasing pitch is a descending scale.

  • Spiritual
  • Moral
  • Social
  • Cultural

Develop the individual:

It helps students understand that creativity does not always come from intiating something from scratch but instead developing an already existing idea further.

Create a supportive community:

Encourage students to blend own ideas and those from established composers.

Term 6: Advanced variations

Students will explore how to develop musical ideas. They will be able to recognise and analyse variations, and will compose at least 2 sets of variations using the techniques of Retrograde, Inversion, Diminution and Augmentation.

Demonstrate understanding of each of the 4 advanced techniques by incorporating them to the song Frere Jacques.

Students will vary a melody using the techniques of retrograde, augmentation, diminution, inversion or sequence.

Students will describe how variation has been achieved through correct identification of instruments, timbres and more advanced variation techniques when listening to unfamiliar music.

Retrograde

A musical line which is the reverse of a previously or simultaneously stated line is said to be its retrograde or cancrizans ("walking backward", medieval Latin, from cancer, crab). An exact retrograde includes both the pitches and rhythms in reverse.

  • Spiritual
  • Moral
  • Social
  • Cultural

Develop the individual:

It helps students understand that creativity does not always come from scratch but instead developing an already existing idea further. Understand how the same 4 techniques shave been used in art and architecture to create new forms and structures.

Create a supportive community:

Encourage students to exchange and explore own ideas and to challenge conventions.