Four examples and five exercises in anacrustic opening phrases, exploring stylistic chord choices, melodic bass lines, and revision of a few favourite stock patterns.
Language for learning: Melodic movement: scalic, major, moving by step, conjunct, moving by leap, triadic, disjunct, ascending, descending, repeating, in relation to the tonic and dominant, root, third, fifth. Pitch: low, mid, high. Notation: metre, note names, note values, bar, beat, line, part. Texture: melody and accompaniment. Rhythm: pulse, repetitive, off-beat, syncopated, back-beat, skank. Harmony and tonality: major and minor triads. Timbre/Forces: voices, guitar, bass, drum kit, marimbula/mento box, horn section, backing singers. Structure: verse/chorus, intro, contrast, repetition, riff. DAW: real-time, step-time recording, sequencing, edit, loop, duplicate, quantise, locator.
Language for Learning: Melodic movement: scalic, moving by step, conjunct, moving by leap, triadic, disjunct, ascending, descending, repeating, modified, phrase, resolve. Pitch: low, mid, high. Notation: score, metre, note names, note values, bar, beat, line, part. Texture: melody and accompaniment, unison, octaves, solo, block chord, orchestral tutti. Rhythm: regular pulse, metre, down-beat, syncopated. Harmony and tonality: major and minor, chord, triad, cadence, consonance, dissonance, tonic, dominant, I ‘one’, V ‘five’, key signature. Timbre/Forces: orchestra, families of instruments, individual instrument names , strings bowed (arco and pizz.) choir, voice types: soprano, alto, tenor, bass. Structure: phrase, AA’BA’, contrast, repetition, balanced, question and answer. Dynamics: piano, forte, soft, strong, crescendo, diminuendo.
Language for Learning: Melodic movement: scalic, moving by step, conjunct, moving by leap, triadic, disjunct, chromatic, ascending, descending, repeating, phrase, improvisatory. Pitch: low, mid, high, note-bending, blue note. Notation: ‘seen v heard’ - written versus implied pitch and rhythm. Texture: melody and accompaniment, ‘call and response’, solo, unison. Rhythm: on-beat, off-beat, swung, triplet, syncopation, up-beat, down-beat, improvisatory, ‘playing in the cracks’, walking bass. Harmony and tonality: triad, chord extension, 7ths, functional harmony, primary triads, key, cadence, consonance, dissonance, tonic, sub-dominant. Timbre/Forces: voice styles and instruments associated with Blues and their techniques - note bending, scat, improvisation. Structure: 12 bar Blues, ‘the head’, 'the top', ‘stop chorus’, AAB phrase structure.
Measuring musical attainment and progress at KS3. How do you know when students are making musical progress, rather than just going through the motions of completing tasks and collecting a bunch of marks?
Minor chorales and the partnership between the home key and its relative major. In minor chorales, there’s a really strong pull towards the relative major, so this example and exercise is all about the partnership between the home (minor) key, its relative major, and the relative major’s relatives.
Opening phrases and making decisions about keys. The exercises in this resource remind students how important it is to consider how one phrase moves to the next, both in terms of part-writing and in the handling of the beautiful modulatory language of this genre.
Beautiful bass lines part 2. There are certain melodic shapes that are perfect for ‘set piece’ bass lines that move by step. In this example, the thing to look for is a repetition of the mediant on the downbeat that is quitted conjunctly.
Beautiful bass lines part 1. This exercise features an example and exercise that illustrates how Bach sometimes harmonises adjacent chords with the same chord, in the same position, and disguises the repetition by walking between and away from the onbeats with AUX and UPNs.
Language for Learning: Melodic movement: scalic, modal, moving by step, conjunct, moving by leap, triadic, disjunct, ascending, descending, repeating, modified, improvisatory, fixed, repetitive, motivic development. Pitch: low, mid, high, tessitura, register. Notation: piano roll, score, bpm, note names, note values. Texture: melody and accompaniment, unison, octaves, solo, layering, doubling, heterophony, tutti, countermelody. Rhythm: regular pulse, ostinato, on-beat, syncopated, 4-on-the-floor, augmentation, diminution. Harmony and tonality: major, minor, modal. Timbre/Forces: acoustic, live, looped, synthesized, sampled. Structure: ostinato, cyclic, based on gradual/dramatic change, motivic development, countermelody, elaboration, fragmentation. Dynamics: loud, strong, forte, quiet, soft, piano, crescendo, diminuendo, fade-in, fade out. DAW: real-time/ step-time recording, sequencing, editing, quantising, balancing, attack, decay, sustain, release, sample, loop, mix-down, panning, sweep.
