Why Study Music?
Many students and parents think that you should only study music if you seem to have an innate gift for it, but the truth is, anyone and everyone can study music.
In fact, studying music, regardless of your musical skill level, has several mental and psychological benefits to offer. Learning Music is a meaningful and gratifying experience.
Music education enhances learning skills, communication skills, creativity, teamwork, discipline, cultural awareness, respect for others and self-esteem.
Pupil Voice
“I enjoy music, it lets me express myself.”
Who teaches it?
Rebecca Harker teaches KS3 music.
How is it taught?
You will have one70-minute lesson per week.
What do we learn?
Film music
This scheme teaches students to use cues, teamwork, creativity, and structure to provide soundtracks for well-known film clips. This scheme also prepares students for some of the compositional processes they will experience in GCSE music.
The guitar project
In this scheme students will be taught how to play the guitar through performing pieces reading guitar tablature as a soloist and as part of an ensemble and through composition.
Hip Hop
This scheme is really two projects in one. It begins with a performance project, which provides a foundation for composition and performance project. Hip Hop/Rap utilises a great number of transferrable skills – teamwork, confidence, diction, creativity, independence, analysis, and imagination. It focuses on a range of literacy strands including rhyming schemes, creative writing, analytical writing, and poetry
Elements of Music/ Carnival of the Animals
Students will focus on recognising the 7 recognised Elements of Music: pitch, timbre, texture, tempo, duration, silence and dynamics. Students will learn to be creative on their own and work solely on acoustic instruments to create live performances
The Blues
Blues music is an essential forerunner of many popular musical styles. Through Blues we develop performance skills through learning the 12 bar blues and through improvisation and compositional skills that students need to be successful in KS3 and 4.
African
After working on creating music students move onto djembes and dunduns. West African rhythms provide a more challenging and complex project. In this scheme students focus on multiple rhythms, composition and performance skills and drumming techniques.
Theme And Variations
This project puts a modern slant on ‘classic’ skills. It encourages students to be creative but also to take influence and guidance from great composers such as Mozart, Pachelbel, and Beethoven.
Reggae
This scheme students can learn a range of reggae pieces by well-known artists. They listen to and analyse a range of pieces from Caribbean musical traditions and related styles. Students finish this project by composing, perform and record their own reggae songs.
Programme Music
This scheme aims to explore how pictures and art can provide the inspiration and stimulus for composition. Pupils then explore the mood of some of a story can be represented through sound and how the elements of music are used to create different effects.
Where could it lead?
- background singer
- blogger
- booking agent
- composer
- DJ
- event manager
- instrument technician
- live sound technician
- music PR
- music teacher
- music therapist
- musical director
- musician
- radio producer
- recording engineer
- singer
- songwriter
- tour manager