Unpacked Content
Essential Questions
EU: To express their musical ideas, musicians analyze, evaluate, and refine their performance over time through openness to new ideas, persistence, and the application of appropriate criteria.
EQ: How do musicians improve the quality of their performance?
EQ: How do musicians improve the quality of their performance?
Skills Examples
Performing
- Perform three or four repertoire pieces in contrasting styles (see Artistic Process/ Creating).
- Choose one of your repertoire pieces, analyze the texture, chords, and form, and write a piece of your own in the same style.
- Notate your piece with staff paper or in a music notation software, such as Noteflight or Finale, etc.
- Sight-read something every day from a variety of sources, such as a graded series of classical music, a hymnal, the sample pages provided on musicnotes.com, sheetmusicplus.com, etc.
- Research the time period and composers of the pieces you are performing. Find out "performance practice" information for each time period, style, composer, or piece. Determine whether your research affects the way you perform pieces.
Vocabulary
Rhythm
- Beat (division into twos and threes)
- Meter (2/2, 3/8, 6/8, common time, cut time, alla breve)
- Notes and Rests (dotted quarter, eighth)
- Tempo (more Italian terms, such as adagio, allegretto, andantino, con brio, con moto, lento, moderato, vivace, vivo; metronome ranges for tempos)
- Other (syncopation, anticipation, a tempo)
- Scales (chromatic, whole tone, harmonic minor, blues scale)
- Intervals (P1, m2, M2, m3, M3, P4, tritone [A4, D5], P5, m6, M6, m7, M7, P8)
- Staff Notation (accidentals, enharmonic notes)
- Melodic Figures (sequence, Guitar: hammer-on, pull-off; Piano: grace note)
- Circle of Fifths
- Intervals (P1, m2, M2, m3, M3, P4, tritone [A4, D5], P5, m6, M6, m7, M7, P8)
- Triads (four qualities, inversions)
- Seventh Chords (M7, Mm7, m7)
- Function (tonic, dominant, subdominant)
- Cadences (open, closed)
- Other (consonance/ dissonance)
- Dynamics (pp-ff, cresc., dim.)
- Articulation (accent, sfz, tenuto; Guitar: hammer ons, pull offs; Piano: two note slurs)
- See Beat and Tempo above
- Character/ Style (English and Italian terms, e.g., cantabile, dolce, espressivo, giocoso, scherzando, spiritoso)
- Playing techniques/ practice techniques
- Scales and Arpeggios
- I-IV-V7-I/i-iv-V7-i cadences
- Improvisation (e.g., diatonic chord progressions, such as F-G-C-Am)
- Sight-Reading
- Ensemble Playing
- Repertoire, representative of various styles, memorized and performed
Anchor Standards
Anchor Standard 5: Develop and refine artistic techniques and work for presentation.
