Music Inquiry

This study offers pathways for students whose main interest is a combination of performing, composing/arranging and investigating music through music making, analysing and responding in relation to their particular interests. It recognises that music is frequently a collaborative art where students work with others, and at other times individually.

Music making is a collective and integrated experience. It involves composing, arranging, interpreting, reimagining, improvising, recreating, performing and critiquing music in an informed manner. All these activities involve active engagement in imaginative music making, responding and remaking. Students perform and compose/arrange music to demonstrate musical influences of an existing style and/or performer in relation to their own works and the works of others.

Students develop aural skills by responding to music from a range of sources across time and place, comparing their music characteristics. They analyse music works and/or styles and explore how they have influenced subsequent music makers, including students’ own works. They develop an understanding of how the treatment of music elements, concepts and compositional devices in one work and/or style can be identified and explained in the works of others, leading to a reflection on their own music making.

Influence in music
In this unit, through music making and responding, students focus on connections between music created in different times and/or places and the influence(s) of one on the other. Their music making involves the integrated music experiences of performing, creating and responding. They compose, arrange, interpret, reimagine, improvise, recreate, perform and critique music in a scaffolded manner that will lead to their project in Unit 4, where students become increasingly autonomous and self-directed and less dependent on teacher direction and support.

Students perform music to demonstrate musical approaches influenced by an existing style and/or performer, and create/arrange short music works that include identifiable influences from an existing work/performer/style and are able to explain these influences.

Students develop aural skills by responding to and analysing music from a range of sources across time and place, comparing their music characteristics. They analyse a music work and/or style and explore how it has influenced subsequent music creators. They develop an understanding of how the treatment of music elements, concepts and compositional devices in one work and/or style can be identified and explained in the works of others.

Project

In this unit, students deepen their understanding of the influence of music by considering it at a personal level. They move from considering and reflecting on the influences in the works of others to applying new understandings of influence in their own music making. They are increasingly able to deliberate on and articulate their thinking and choices.

Their music making continues to focus on integrated music experiences and they become increasingly autonomous and self-directed after the modelling they experienced in Unit 3.

Students perform music to demonstrate musical influences of an existing style and/or performer on their own works, and they create/arrange short music works that include identifiable influences from an existing work/performer/style, which they are able to explain.

Students develop aural skills by responding to music from a range of sources across time and place, comparing their music characteristics. They analyse music works and/or styles and explore how they have influenced their own music making. They develop an understanding of how the treatment of music elements, concepts and compositional devices in one work and/or style can be identified and explained in their own works.

Students choose their own Area of Investigation. This may be:

●    a style

●    a performer

●    a creator

●    a musical genre.

Students analyse at least two works from their chosen Area of Investigation. They discuss how the treatment of music elements, concepts and compositional devices in these works influence their own musical output. They describe the connections between these works and their own music making.

They perform on their chosen instrument. The works performed will come from their chosen area of investigation. They create/arrange a music work. The work should demonstrate direct connections to the chosen Area of Investigation.

Students continue to respond to a wide variety of music excerpts from a range of different music traditions, times and locations. In their responses, they continue to develop skills in identifying and describing similarities and differences between musical approaches