Year 7
In year 7 you will cover a variety of topics that build and develop your musical skills. You will participate in a baseline assessment for your first 7 weeks at St Edmund Arrowsmith. This assessment will give you an opportunity to show your performing potential on your own instrument, keyboard or glockenspiel. You will have the chance to compose your own music to a given stimulus making use of musical devices such as ostinatos and manipulating musical elements such as dynamics, tempo and tonality.
Following the baseline assessment, you will study a variety of topics such as: music from China, Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’, 1950s’ Pop Music, theme and variation, instruments of the orchestra and class keyboard lessons. Throughout these topics you will learn to understand, recognise and apply the following musical concepts:
- Dynamics: crescendo / diminuendo
- Rhythm: ostinato, dotted rhythms, 4/4
- Structure: repeating patterns, word painting, rounds, 32 bar song
- Melody: ascending / descending
- Instruments: strings / woodwind / brass / percussion / orchestra
- Tonality: major / minor / pentatonic / C major
- Tempo: contrasting tempo, ritardando, accelerando
- Texture: thick / thin, changing textures, melody and accompaniment.
Year 8
You will continue to develop your understanding and application of musical concepts learned in year 7. In addition you will study a variety of topics such as: composing using modes and drones, sequencing and remixing dance music using music technology, Holst's 'Planets' suite, musical futures class ensemble, and intermediate class keyboard lessons. Throughout these topics you will learn to understand, recognise and apply the following musical concepts:
- Dynamics: expressive dynamics
- Rhythm: mnemonics, developed patterns, syncopation, 2/4, 3/4 & 5/4 time signatures
- Structure: ternary form, rondo form, suites, dance structure
- Melody: scalic, stepwise
- Instruments: drum machines, synthesisers
- Tonality: dissonance, consonance, Dorian mode, E minor, relative minor
- Tempo: expressive tempo, largo
- Texture: monophonic, polyphonic
Year 9
In year 9 you will continue to further develop your understanding and application of concepts learned in year 7 and year 8. In addition you will study a variety of topics such as: blues music, music for film, dance music composition, musical futures group ensemble and individual performance on keyboard, your own instrument or singing. Throughout these topics you will learn to understand, recognise and apply the following musical concepts:
- Dynamics: expressive dynamics in performance
- Rhythm: irregular time signatures, swing rhythms, triplets
- Structure: popular song, 12-bar blues
- Melody: disjunct, chromatic, blues scale
- Instruments: blues rhythm sections / frontline
- Tonality: atonal
- Texture: call and response
- Harmony: chord sequences
