This unit presents foundational elements of music, showing how pitch and rhythm work together to become melody and meter. Students learn to identify pitches and rhythms in performed music through contextual listening exercises and in notated music through score analysis exercises. They should also routinely engage in composition exercises and apply musical concepts.

Students add to their understanding of pitch relationships established in Unit 1 by exploring minor scales and intervals. They examine timbre, features of melody, motice, and texture, all of which are applied to contextual listening exercises. As students learn and apply melodic and rhythmic concepts, they are introduced to motives and strat to identify and analyze patterns in music.

Students will hear and analyze a variety of chords within real musical contexts, studying relationships of triads and seventh chords built on scale degrees of a given key. Students learn to use Roman and Arabic numbers to communicate the scale degree of the root, the quality, and the bass note of any diatonic chord. They will realize figured bass with regard to Roman numerals.

Students explore 18th-century voice-leading procedures to consider how independent voices create melodies and work together to create harmonies. In preparation for later units, students will continue to engage in motivic analysis and cadences.

Students further develop their understanding of voice leading and harmony as they explore predominant function phrases. Students will need to demonstrate a level of proficiency in understanding melody, harmonic relationships among diatonic chords and basic 18th-century voice-leading procedures.

With a foundational understanding of melody and harmony, students are prepared to augment their understanding of counterpoint through embellishing tones. Students will be empowered to analyze, sing, and compose more complex melodies.

Students will have a proficient understanding of melodic and harmonic relationships and functions within a diatonic context. Students will experience tonicization through ear training and analysis of written music. Students will describe the function of a secondary dominant and relate a deep understanding of key relationships of diatonic chords in a variety of keys.

Examining modes allows students an expanded exploration and understanding of tonality by comparing the modes to major and minor scales. Contextual listening and score analysis of modes in real musical contexts can provide a better understanding of modes then merely memorizing their names and scale patterns.