Year 8 Music

In Year 8 Music, students build their musical vocabulary and musical literacy through experiences in musicology (asking questions of, and analysing and evaluating music), composition and performance. Students explore the ways in 'music works' through formal classroom experiences, and then have the opportunity to work with agency and autonomy to explore this in a context that is familiar to them and that aligns with their musical pathway. The aim is to provide students an greater understanding and enjoyment of music, and for them to see it as an intrinsic part of their life, both at school and beyond.

Across our unit of study, students investigate the key inquiry question: “Is pop music plagiarised?” Students examine the use of music ideas that are shared between works of different times/periods of popular styles and genres, particularly rhythmic/melodic ideas (riffs) and harmonic ideas (chord progressions). They revise the fundamental theoretical aspects of music in terms of duration, melody, and harmony, and investigate ways in which these elements have been used in popular music. Of particular focus is the I-V-vi-IV progression, and the way in which this underpins much popular music; this is founded upon an understanding of the melodic/harmonic construction of these chords/triads from the major scale/in the major tonality.    

Structure

Assessment

Creation of a YouTube-style tutorial for keyboard to demonstrate the performance of a popular song, a group-based composition of a popular song using voice, piano and/or guitar (and other instruments studied), and a musicology project that analyses and evaluates cases of plagiarism in popular music.