Unpacked Content
Essential Questions
EU: Performers make interpretive decisions based on their understanding of context and expressive intent
EQ: How do performers interpret musical works?
EQ: How do performers interpret musical works?
Skills Examples
Performing
- Perform 2 pieces of 4-8 measures that demonstrate appropriate skill sets.
- Pieces can be solo or small ensemble.
- Performances should be contrasting styles and genres.
- Perform a simple melody that you composed.
- Compose a simple melody using I, vi, IV, V7 chords in root position with dynamic contrast.
- Compose a simple melodic line in varying rhythmic patterns in 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4.
- Write out a simple harmonization of a short melody such as "Ode to Joy" using major and minor chords.
- With the teacher's help, mark all phrases in pieces to be performed. Be able to play each phrase by itself. Be able to identify each note name, note value, dynamic marking, and articulation marking.
- 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.
- Search online for recordings of the pieces you are playing. Decide what you like/ dislike about the recordings. Decide whether you would want to incorporate any ideas you hear into your own performance.
- Make video and audio recordings of your playing. Listen, practice the difficult spots, and re-record.
Vocabulary
Rhythm
- Beat (steady beat, rit., accel., fermata)
- Meter (2/4, 3/4, 4/4, barline, pickup measure)
- Notes and rests (quarter, half, dotted half, whole)
- Tempo (metronome markings = beats per minute; basic Italian and English terms, e.g., slow, fast, allegro, andante, largo)
- Other (ties)
- Scales (pentatonic, major, natural minor)
- Intervals (half step, whole step; second, third, fourth, fifth, octave)
- Staff notation (treble and bass clefs, grand staff, lines, spaces, ledger lines, treble G, bass F, sharps, flats, key signatures)
- Melodic figures (step/leap, arpeggio, phrase)
- Intervals (half step, whole step; second, third, fourth, fifth, octave; also, M3, m3)
- Triads (root, third, fifth; major and minor qualities)
- Function (tonic, dominant)
- I-IV-V7-I cadences
- Form (phrase, ostinato)
- Texture (melody, bassline, accompaniment)
- Notation (phrase mark, double bar, repeat sign)
- Dynamics (soft/loud, p, mf, f)
- Articulation (staccato, legato)
- Historical significance of instrument
- Posture, hand position, finger numbers, basic playing techniques
Anchor Standards
Anchor Standard 4: Select, analyze, and interpret artistic work for presentation.
