Unpacked Content
Essential Questions
EU: Musicians' creative choices are influenced by their expertise, context, and expressive intent.
EQ: How do musicians make creative decisions?
EQ: How do musicians make creative decisions?
Skills Examples
Performing
- Guitar: perform two contrasting solo pieces in first-fifth position equivalent to repertoire found in Levels Three through Four of the Guitar Studies and Repertoire Album (Royal Conservatory-Frederick Harris Publications).
- Piano: Perform two to three pieces in contrasting styles (level comparable to Magrath Masterwork Classics Levels 4-6, American Popular Piano Repertoire Books 4-6, etc.).
- Piano: appropriate level scales and arpeggiated chords (comparable to AMTA requirements to Level I or II, by age level, on p. 11 and 12
- http://www.almta.org/AMTA_Member_Handbook.pdf.
- Perform music from a variety of popular genres such as: Blues, Country, Ragtime, Rock, Jazz, etc.
- Create melodies based on major, and minor scale patterns in a variety of keys.
- Harmonize the melodies using major, minor, and seventh chords. Reading/ Writing
- Develop a circle of 5ths chart
- Identify the key signatures for all major keys
- Compose a melody and harmonize it using chords, I, IV, V, vi.
- Determine if a piece is in a major of minor key based on the key signature, melody and harmony.
- Develop grading rubrics for evaluating performance: example-starting with 100 pts, subtract one point for each note error, incorrect fingering, hesitations, other points subtracted for rhythm anomalies, inability to match desired tempo, etc.
Vocabulary
Rhythm
- Beat (strong and weak beats, backbeat, division/subdivision)
- Notes and Rests (dotted eighth, sixteenth)
- Meter (duple, triple, and quadruple simple and compound meters [2/2, 2/4, 6/8; 3/2, 3/4, 9/8; 4/2, 4/4, 12/8], asymmetrical meters [5/4, 7/8, etc.])
- Tempo (all standard Italian tempo terms, using the metronome to practice)
- Other (triplet, swing eighths)
- Scales (3 minor scale forms: natural, harmonic, melodic; relative and parallel minor)
- Intervals (compound)
- Staff Notation (double sharps and flats)
- Melodic Figures (motive, theme, trill, passing tone)
- Triads (suspended chords)
- Seventh Chords (five qualities, four inversions, suspensions)
- Function (all diatonic chord functions)
- Cadences (half, authentic, deceptive)
- Lead Sheets
- Forms (AABA song form, verse, chorus, bridge, 12-bar blues, sonatina, rondo, theme and variations
- Texture (homophonic, polyphonic)
- Dynamics (all standard Italian terms, abbreviations, and symbols)
- Articulation (all standard terms and symbols characteristic to the instrument)
- Tempo and Changing Tempo (all standard Italian, English terms and abbreviations, exposure to French, German terms)
- Character/ Style (all standard Italian and English terms, exposure to French and German terms)
- Playing techniques/ practice techniques
- Scales and Arpeggios
- I-IV-V7-I/i-iv-V7-i cadences
- Improvisation (e.g., around circle of fifths)
- Sight-Reading
- Ensemble Playing
- Repertoire, representative of various styles and style periods, memorized and performed
Anchor Standards
Anchor Standard 2: Organize and develop artistic ideas and work.
