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
Choose a genre/ style and with your teacher's help, realize a chord progression in an appropriate figuration/ style.
Choose a familiar melody and create a Theme and Variations featuring several different styles.
Reading/ Writing
- 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.).
- Perform music from a variety of popular genres such as: Blues, Country, Ragtime, Rock, Jazz, etc.
- Notate your compositions, using staff paper or notational software.
- 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.
- Find several different recordings of each repertoire piece you are learning. Notice differences/ similarities in tempo, phrasing, technical skill, and overall effect. Decide which characteristics make a convincing performance.
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 4: Select, analyze, and interpret artistic work for presentation.
