Music

Unit 1: Reading Music 

Students will be able to independently use their learning to:

• Improve instrumental skills

• Develop performance skills and an understanding of the performance process

• Understand musical theory, vocabulary and history

• Develop self-discipline, group responsibility, and cooperation

• Encourage personal musical insight and communication through music

• Enhance critical listening and appreciation of the music

• Encourage the use of music for the enrichment of life

• Provide opportunities to enhance self esteem

• Appreciate musical performances and their cultural connections

• Promote symphonic bands and wind ensembles as serious and distinctive mediums of musical expression and cultural heritage

Unit 2: Ensemble Playing 

• Students will be able to independently use their learning to:

• Play expressively with appropriate dynamics, phrasing and articulation, and interpretation 

• Read a repertoire of instrumental literature with a difficult of 2 on a scale of 1 to 6

Unit 3: Expressive Markings

• Students will learn about elements of music.

• Dynamics 

• Tempo

Unit 4: Critical Response 

Students will perceive, describe and respond to basic elements of music, including:

• Beat

• Tempo

• Rhythm

• Meter

• Pitch

• Melody

• Texture

• Dynamics

• Harmony

• Form 

Unit 5: Rhythm

Students will demonstrate musical understanding and skill in:

•  Maintaining a steady pulse while clapping, counting, singing, or playing

• Subdividing the pulse into two equal parts while clapping, counting, singing, or playing

•  Beginning, sustaining and ending rhythms following rules of duration and release appropriate to this level (while singing or playing)

• Writing, clapping, counting, singing and playing whole, half, dotted half, quarter note/rest rhythms presented on a single pitch in time signatures of 4/4, 2/4, or ¾ with a metronome marking of a quarter note = 80

• Clapping, counting, singing, and playing the following notation, or equivalent rests, in

• 2/2 or cut time at M.M. = 60: 

• Clapping, counting, singing, and playing the following rhythms or equivalent rests (in addition to those in previous levels) in 3/8 or 6/8 time at M.M. ƒ = 132 or . = 44:

• Clapping, counting, singing and playing the following time transition pattern in 2/4 or

• 4/4 time at M.M. = 60:

• Additional rhythms using eighth notes/rests for percussionists

• Students will demonstrate an increasing degree of rhythmic independence.  In grade 8 and 9 students are required to clap, count sing or play one rhythm while another rhythm is performed simultaneously

Unit 7: Scales and Arpeggios

Students will be able to independently use their learning to:

• Write and play major scales in the keys of Bb, Eb, F and Ab

• Write and play chromatic scale one octave 

• Students will be able to play articulations: 

• All slurred

• All legato

• All tongued

• Two slurred / two slurred

• Two slurred / two tongued

• Two tongued / two slurred

Unit 8: Intervals 

• Students will be able to independently use their learning to:

• Play on their instrument, identify and notate the intervals of the Major scale

• Understanding: the 1st, 3rd and 5th steps of a scale make a chord. An arpeggio is a ‘broken’ chord in whose notes are played individually