Each year group has an individual focus. All units and every lesson consist of performance, composition and listening, and all of them have at least at two of the three disciplines.
Year 7
The aim for Year 7 is to develop understanding of the fundamentals in music - how to build compositions, how to perform properly and how to understand music when listening to it. The units are as follows:
Story music- a look into the elements of music with an open-briefed creative task as part of an assessment alongside a listening test. This unit acts as a bridging unit from Key Stage 2, enabling students to explore and understand the key elements of music.
Keyboard skills- this is a performance-based task focussed on developing technique across the term. Whilst the elements of music are more important and allow an exploration into composition, this unit teaches the fundamentals of good performance technique and musical score reading.
Rhythms- students learn the different rhythmic values of notes and create their own rhythmic compositions. This is put in now as rhythm is another key element of music, which, without any understanding, can impact performance and composition alike for some time.
Scales- students learn the fundamentals behind tonality and how to make coherent compositions through a knowledge of various tonal systems. World music is introduced in this unit, with the pentatonic scale touching on aspects of Asian music. This is chosen now to prepare a more thorough understanding for composition, which is further emphasised in the next unit....
Chords- students expand on the knowledge of scales in the previous unit by working out how to form chords and how to harmonise a melody effectively. With this unit as the concluding one for Year 7, this completes a solid base from which further musical development can be made in Year 8.
Year 8
The aim for Year 8 is to develop understanding of the fundamentals in music from Year 7 into more complex compositions and performance frameworks. World music and musical forms are introduced as dedicated units, within which the musical elements are discussed.
The units are as follows:
Variations- students develop their understanding of scales and chords from the previous units by creating variations on common themes. This acts as a deceptively complex simple start- students are required to use their prior knowledge as a basis for varying these themes.
Reggae Music- students investigate the context and the features behind reggae music, acquiring the skills to compose their own reggae section. This is the first time that students compose a more substantial set of parts that combine with each other, the nature of the musical features, which are comparatively simple to other genres make this more achievable at this year group.
African Rhythms- students will investigate the context and the features behind a range of African music, focussing on the drumming tradition from Western Africa. This is an extension on composing with rhythm in Year 7, creating more complex polyrhythms and introducing short-form improvisations.
Asian Music- students will be introduced to the rich musical cultures of China, Indonesia and India- some features of which are taught in GCSE which should also help build full-scale compositions. Both classical and popular music examples from countries are explored and performed. This is taught at this time as it offers an opportunity to widen a student’s musical perspectives and empowers them with knowledge of scales, improvisation and rhythmic ostinato useful for both Year 9 and GCSE.
Advertisements- students will use computer skills to develop a piece of music using Logic music creation software. This operates as an introduction to how the music mac room works ahead of Year 9 film music and looks at how to build up layers of sound on a computer, whilst also building on a student’s knowledge of notation gained from Year 7 and earlier in Year 8.
