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
- Guitar: Perform two contrasting solo pieces equivalent to repertoire found in Levels Six through Eight 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 6-10, American Popular Piano Repertoire Books 6-8, etc.).
- Compose a piece using non-diatonic scales, such as whole tone, pentatonic, octatonic, and invented scales.
- Compose a piece using modes other than minor/ major for melody and harmony.
- Compose a piece using a 12-tone row.
- Compose a piece using non-triadic harmonic structures like quartal and quintal harmony, chord clusters, and harmonies made from mixtures of different intervals.
- Reharmonize a familiar hymn tune using jazz chords.
- Find and study scores written in non-traditional music notation (chance music, indeterminacy, proportional notation, graphic scores, 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.
Vocabulary
Rhythm
- Meter (non-metered)
- Notes and Rests (irregular divisions, i.e., 5 or 7 notes per beat)
- Other (3 against 4)
- Scales (symmetrical, exotic)
- Melodic Figures (nonharmonic tones)
- Triads (diatonic triad qualities in minor keys: i iio III+ iv V VI viio)
- Seventh Chords (diatonic 7th chord qualities in major keys: IM7 iim7 iiim7 IVM7 V7 vim7 viim7-5)
- Function (modulation, pivot chords, borrowed chords)
- Non-Tertian harmony
- Figured bass
- Forms (fugue, concerto, scherzo, divertimento, etude, prelude)
- Texture (hetereophonic, mixed textures)
- Performance practice conventions in various periods/ styles (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern, Pop/ Jazz/ World)
- Playing techniques/ practice techniques
- Scales and Arpeggios
- I-IV-V7-I/i-iv-V7-i cadences
- Cadences/ chord progressions/ improvisation in Popular/ Rock/ Jazz style(s)
- Improvisation with non-tertian harmony
- Sight-Reading
- Ensemble Playing
- Repertoire, representative of Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern, and Popular/ Rock/ Jazz/ World periods/ styles, memorized and performed
Anchor Standards
Anchor Standard 5: Develop and refine artistic techniques and work for presentation.
