“Classroom Music” in the Rhinegold publishing catalogue

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Tuesday, 9th February, 2010

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Classroom Music

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Classroom Music, written for teachers by teachers, is a unique bi-termly resource for anyone involved in secondary-school music education. Published just before the start of each term and half term for maximum benefit, Classroom Music's articles will help you with classroom issues and give you teaching ideas, lesson materials and product reviews.

With specifications changing at all levels, it has never been more important to keep in touch with the very latest teaching advice. Our lesson materials section provides material you can use directly in your own teaching while the features section mixes regular series with one-off articles on pertinent teaching and administrative issues and career development.

Each issue contains six substantial schemes of work, covering KS3, GCSE, AS and A2, and from 2009/10, we are covering BTEC and KS2/3 transition. Some are specific to certain exam boards; others can be used more widely.

Online lesson materials from October 2009: the autumn term 2 2009/10 issue was the first to give you online-only lesson materials. Subscribers can create a user account, enabling them to download the lesson materials for the latest issue. And they'll still receive a copy of the magazine, with features and reviews.

*NEW*: Classroom Music welcomes feedback and ideas from its subscribers. You can now comment on Classroom Music online via our blog. Alternatively, email classroom@rhinegold.co.uk, so that we can be as helpful and relevant to your teaching as we can.

Need help setting up your online user account? Visit the Classroom Music blog for step-by-step instructions.

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Lesson Material

Issue 34 (Spring Term 2 - 09/10)

Key Stage 3: Musicals

Author: Roberts Steadman

Pupils love to learn about musicals; I guess it’s the mix of music, drama, catchy songs, costumes and dance. The whole spectacle of the production has great appeal and that’s the reason why the musical became one of the most important genres of the 20th century. This scheme of work takes pupils through the history and development of the modern musical and then looks in greater detail at one classic example, West Side Story.

A project about musicals easily lends itself to some cross-curricular collaborations with drama and dance but, potentially, also with the English department if they are studying a book or play that has been adapted as a musical. In addition, the media studies department may be studying a film that has been made into a musical.

Read less...; The power of music

Author: Jane Werry

Music is all around us, and fulfils an extraordinary range of purposes in our lives: to soothe, to inspire, to energise, to bond, to sell washing powder – the list is endless. The aim of this unit of work is to get students to consider the role of music in their own lives, and understand some of the ways that it affects the lives of others. I have used this unit successfully towards the end of Year 8, although it could be adapted to fit in earlier or later in KS3.

The unit includes listening, performing, and composing activities centred on football songs, lullabies, Olympic songs and music in adverts. There is also a research project which students complete as an ongoing homework over the course of the unit, which covers music in sport, music and healing, music and propaganda, the Mozart effect, and muzak. Giving students choices can be a powerful motivator, and one of the things my students have enjoyed most about this unit is its flexibility and opportunities for them to choose which performing and composing activities they do.
Read less...
Key Stage 4: GCSE: technology performance options

Author: Rachel Brooks & Craig Ratcliffe

The use of technology in performance has been embraced by all the main examination boards in the recent changes to the GCSE specifications (from September 2009). As the popularity of music technology is seeing an increase in schools and with students, you may be intending to offer music technology-based performance options for the first time to your students.

This article guides you through the sequencing and multi-tracking processes and provides suggested activities for you and your students to practise these. Read less...; Tango

Author: Richard Knight

Tango appears in the new OCR GCSE specification (Area of Study 3: Dance Music) and this article is intended to provide some helpful insights and material for teachers engaged in delivering this course. It could alternatively form the basis of a KS3 project, and it is also hoped that the materials included will be of wider interest, since tango offers a whole new musical world that will appeal to many.

2009 has been a significant year in the history of tango: in September UNESCO awarded tango world heritage status. Its presence on the UNESCO list is unusual: a style of dance and music alongside the great natural and man-made sites of the world (Stonehenge, the Grand Canyon, Sydney Opera House, etc.). You won’t find polka, waltz or foxtrot on the list; not even samba or salsa. So what is so special about tango?
Read less...
Key Stage 5: AQA A2: English Choral Music of the 20th Century

Author: Richard Knight

The AQA approach of setting topics but not prescribing specific works can lead to an embarrassment of riches when it comes to music that you might choose to study. In the Rhinegold Study Guide for this specification, space permitted only a fairly tightly drawn selection of works. For the English Choral Music topic, the three most famous works of the category were examined, at least in part:
- Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius
- Walton: Belshazzar’s Feast
- Britten: War Requiem.

While these three towering scores offer more than enough material, there is no shortage of wonderful alternative pieces that teachers could also incorporate, either to augment the musical diet, or to provide an alternative to the mainstream sacred works of the century and to provide a wider chronological span.

This article is intended to cover three such pieces in some detail. These are:
- Lambert: The Rio Grande – a rollicking, jazz-infused cantata-cum-piano concerto depicting Brazilian partying, written in 1927
- Howells: Hymnus paradisi – an extraordinary personal response to bereavement written by this master of the English cathedral tradition between 1935 and 1950
- Rutter: Requiem – a skilful blend of various influences from this modern master of English choral music.
Read less...; Edexcel AS: composition

Author: Alan Charlton

The new Edexcel AS composition paper (Unit 6MU02) is now in its second year of teaching. Replacing the old paper 6702/01, it incorporates a number of changes that will have caused teachers to revise their delivery of the unit, in many cases quite drastically.

This article will examine these changes and provide practical advice and ideas for your teaching, and for students as they prepare coursework and the accompanying sleeve note. Read less...

Issue 33 (Spring Term 1 - 09/10)

Key Stage 3: Music and nature

Author: Richard Knight

In Classroom Music summer term 1 2008/09, various ideas were presented for projects using the sea as an inspiration for music. Here, in a companion article, we look at various projects related to more land-based elements of nature.

For artistically minded people, there is nothing new in turning to the natural world around us for inspiration. In an age where a rebalancing between man and nature is, many would argue, overdue, encouraging pupils to respond creatively to the natural world around them, tapping into their often fervent concern for their planet, has much to recommend. There are many facets to nature that one can explore musically; here we consider three: landscape, animals and weather.
Read less...; Roma and Balkan music

Author: Simon McKerrell

This article unveils the world of Roma music (‘gypsy’ music) in the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe. The article places an emphasis on developing an understanding of the culture of the Roma, and how this is reflected in their music and music about them.

Topics include: varied listening (art and traditional genres); class discussions of discrimination; working with Balkan rhythm, music and language; creative improvisation; gender; making a Roma cimbalom (dulcimer); understanding how and why Roma are a marginalised group in Europe.
Read less...
Key Stage 4: BTEC Firsts: exploring musical composition

Author: Barry Russell

TV-theme, film and video-game music composition projects are common currency. The assignments in this article frame three approaches to these sorts of project and, as well as giving students the opportunity to meet all the grading criteria for BTEC Firsts Unit 4, are designed with supporting materials for the teacher to help students develop their ideas.

The projects are also easily adapted for classroom work in Years 7–9 and as frameworks for integrated assignments related to the AQA GCSE area of study: Film Music.

Although all the assignments are ostensibly about composing for TV, film and games, each has a related compositional concept:
Assignment 1 – manipulating musical ideas and units
Assignment 2 – using modal material
Assignment 3 – extending tonality, developing atonal material.
Read less...; Hip hop

Author: Charlotte Lane

This scheme of work is intended for use with key stage 4 students and has been developed from existing schemes that have been taught at both KS4 and KS3 level. It is designed to fulfil many of the listening, performance and composition requirements of the AQA, OCR and Edexcel syllabuses and could also be adapted for the BTEC First Certificate in Performing Arts at Level 2. Where appropriate, links have been highlighted directly to the pertinent course material.
The intention has been to provide access to teachers and students, regardless of ability level or availability of resources, to this very relevant and current musical genre.

The journey that the learner takes encompasses an investigation into the musical style that is hip hop, and leads the learner through practical composition and music-making opportunities. The scheme provides a guided approach to creating and performing a hip-hop piece, but also offers many other performance opportunities throughout. Read less...
Key Stage 5: Edexcel AS Music Technology: focus styles 2009/10 - reggae and heavy rock

Author: Chris Duffill

This article is primarily aimed at covering the knowledge and skills needed for section B of the Music Technology AS listening paper, but also covers other wider areas of relevance in Music Technology, either for the Edexcel A level or any of the other boards. It will also have wider uses in the curriculum if these styles are required as an area of study, and some of the technology aspects may provide useful at GCSE and even KS3.

It includes: stylistic features – ensembles, timbres, writing approaches, performance, recording, production and use of technology; context – influences, significant artists, social and cultural background, development, popularity; how to deliver the Special Focus topics in the classroom; crossover with practical tasks and skills development (a two-way process); and other listening and analysis work. Read less...; Edexcel AS: 20th-century vocal music

Author: Simon Rushby

This article will explore in detail the last three of the six set works that students have to know for the Vocal Music area of study for Unit 3.

Rhinegold’s Edexcel AS Music Study Guide (second edition) by David Bowman and Paul Terry provides detailed background and analysis of these works, and I do not intend to repeat that information here. Instead I will look at each of the three songs from the perspective of the two types of question that will come up in the 2010 summer AS examination. Read less...

Issue 32 (Autumn Term 2 - 09/10)

Key Stage 2/3: Machines

Author: Andy Brooke

How well do you know the students who will be starting in Year 7 next September? What have they been doing for the last seven years, and what have they learned? Have you ever met any of their primary school teachers?

This six-week KS2/KS3 transition unit on the theme of machines promotes stronger links between primary and secondary teachers, and suggests that primary school is still just as fun-filled, feel-good and action-packed as we remember ... and with any luck, the kids might even think so too.

This is a unit of work that could be used or adapted as a transition unit, to be delivered by a secondary music teacher alongside the primary class teacher. There are some ambitious activities but, as teachers, we can do no greater service to the students than to have high expectations of them, and to insist that they have similarly high expectations of us and of themselves. Read less...
Key Stage 3: GarageBand

Author: Joe Moretti

GarageBand can be thought of as the complete music package for the classroom: the range of techniques and facilities that it brings is extensive. Through three projects aimed at students at KS3, I will attempt to demonstrate the range and scope of these. The projects will cover the following key areas:

1. Loops - exploration of texture, dynamics, instrumentation and structure; sharing to devices (including ringtones).
2. Class singing - GarageBand and MIDI files, instrumentation and adding live musicians.
3. Audio recording - recording audio via three sources, and introduction of effects.
Read less...; Mexican music

Author: Ruth Hellier-Tinoco

Viva Mexico! The land of sun, turquoise waters and beach resorts. You've seen the mariachi musicians with their huge hats, tight jackets and trousers with silver buttons. You've heard the brilliant trumpets and the soaring violins. You think of dry mountain landscapes and tall spiky cactuses.

But what of P'urhepecha music? Of gentle duet singing, flowing string ensembles and rousing brass bands? In the state of Michoacan, nestled in the green, wooded mountains and on little islands on Lake Patzcuaro, thousands of P'urhepecha musicians play sones, abajenos and pirekuas for religious fiestas, for birthdays, for festivals and for their sweethearts.

Through these lessons, students will listen to and learn to play and sing two P'urhepecha sones. Read less...
Key Stage 4: Edexcel GCSE: Area of Study 3 (popular music in context)

Author: Simon Rushby

This article approaches the Edexcel 'Popular Music' set works with a focus on the questions likely to be asked in the listening paper. Each set work is addressed from the point of view of the different areas of knowledge needed for the paper, as follows:

Context - a little of the historical and stylistic background
Style - an overview of the main stylistic features of the track
A listening guide or overview - best read while listening to the track
An examination of the elements of music - pitch, rhythm, harmony and tonality, instrumentation
and texture, structure and any other important features
Some sample Section A and B questions, or a guide to the types of questions likely to be set.
Read less...
Key Stage 5: BTEC Nationals: three performance projects

Author: Adam Lane

Offered here are three assignments which together cover three of the BTEC National units for the various Music qualifications:

Unit 22: Music Performance Techniques

Unit 31: Pop Music in Practice

Unit 40: Working and Developing as a Musical Ensemble.

The three assignments are presented here as task sheets suitable for handing out to learners, with each task clearly linked to the grading criteria. Read less...; OCR A2: listening/analysis

Author: Veronica Jamset

This article will outline how the listening and analysis tasks have changed in the new specification for
OCR A2.

Rhinegold will not be publishing a revised listening tests book for this, but here, the author of the existing edition explains how the material in it can be adapted for use in current teaching, suggesting new questions to ask and issues for you to discuss with your students. The article will then examine Parry's setting of Jerusalem in detail, asking questions that fit the requirements of the new specification (and providing the answers), while including extracts from the score to analyse. Read less...; Tonality (part 2)

Author: Hugh Benham

In part 1 of this article (Classroom Music autumn term 1 2009/10), tonality was defined, and considered in terms of various listening, analysis and composition tasks. In part 2, some historical trends are outlined; understanding of these will assist analytical studies in particular, for a range of courses including A level, IB and Pre-U.

There are three main lines of investigation:

How Renaissance and early Baroque tonalities compare and contrast with later major- and minor-key tonality

Classical-period major-minor tonality, especially in terms of musical structure

How, from the 19th century, this type of tonality was superseded. Read less...