Explore and build foundational musical skills with Spotlight on Music from McGraw-Hill. This course offers a variety of learning activities that include singing, dancing, virtual instruments, listening maps, authentic sound recordings and playing the recorder. The course is organized into nine units. Students learn about these musical elements: duration, pitch, design, tone color, expressive qualities and cultural context. Students explore beat, meter, rhythm, melody, harmony, tonality, texture, form, tone color, dynamics, tempo, articulation, style, and music background.

Course Outline

Unit 1

· Beat/Meter – steady beat rhythm patterns in 4/4, time signature 4/4, rhythm patterns in 2/4

· Rhythm – quarter notes, eighth notes, rests, ragtime patterns, syncopated patterns

· Melody – playing a melodic accompaniment

· Harmony – chords, chord symbols

· Texture – melodic accompaniment on recorder and keyboard

· Form/Structure – ABAB

· Tone Color – instrumental and vocal tone color in different versions of a song

· Style/Background – popular music and styles, dance styles, blues, fine art, ragtime, role of music critics, poetry

Unit 2

· Beat/Meter – rhythm patterns in 4/4

· Rhythm – creating, combining, notating, and performing patterns in 4/4; notes and rests; drum cadences

· Melody – playing a melodic accompaniment

· Harmony – major triad chords

· Form/Structure – introduction, verse, refrain, coda, contrast, rondo

· Tone Color – vocal imitation of instrumental sounds, glee club, marching band, a cappella singing, brass, woodwinds, percussion, vocal range, strings

· Tempo – march

· Articulation – performing a cheer

Unit 3

· Beat/Meter – mixed meter, rhythm patterns in 4/4, 6/4, 6/8, 2/8, 3/8

· Rhythm – quarter notes, eighth notes and rests in 4/4; creating a hand drum accompaniment; playing in 6/8, 3/8, and 2/8 in a mixed meter song; stepping patterns; syncopation; singing in 6/4 and 4/4; rhythmic ostinato; rap rhythms in 4/4; percussion patterns in 4/4

· Harmony – harmonic accompaniment, singing a song in five parts, descant

· Texture – African percussion, harmonic and rhythmic rap accompaniment

· Form/Structure – AB, binary form

· Tone Color – mariachi bands, computer-generated sounds, analog synthesizers

· Style/Background – Oktoberfest, Chinese New Year, Cinco de May, culture defined, mariachi bands, Cahuilla Indian song, Cameroon processional, Andean folk song, rap music

Unit 4

· Rhythm – tied and dotted rhythms; whole notes, half notes, and dotted rhythms in 4/4; gamelan rhythms; eighths and sixteenths in 2/4 and 4/4

· Melody – gamelan melodic patterns

· Harmony – singing in two parts, harmonic accompaniment

· Texture – instrumentation, SATB choral arrangement, layering strategies in Indonesian gamelan music

· Form/Structure – AABA, AB, ternary form, rondo, D.C., C.S. al coda, coda, fine

· Tone Color – all-male ensemble

· Style/Background – Broadway musicals, copyright laws, opera and Broadway musicals, social issues in musical drama, Mardis Gras, Louisiana folk song, zydeco, mariachi music, “recomposed” opera, Grand Ole Opry and country music, crossover music, rock and roll, disco, tango, blues, soul, Balinese gamelan music, Mongolian folk tune

Unit 5

· Rhythm – sixteenth-note patterns

· Melody – melodic ostinato

· Tonality – dissonance, atonality

· Texture – monophony, homophony, polyphony

· Form/Structure – toccata and fugue, ritornella, concertino, tutti, concerto, rondo, oratorio, symphony, suite, strophic form

· Tone Color – pipe organ

· Dynamics – dynamic changes in tutti and concertino sections, entrada

· Tempo – slow tempo

· Style/Background – music of the Baroque era, oratorios, music of the Classical period, music and fine art of the Romantic period, opera, art songs, music of the twentieth century, experimental music

Unit 6

· Rhythm – triplets, dotted rhythms, anticipation, calypso rhythms, rap rhythms combined with more traditional rhythms

· Melody – phrases, melodic contour

· Harmony – harmonic accompaniments, harmonic progressions

· Tonality – accidentals, scales, borrowed chords

· Texture – texture defined

· Form/Structure – hymns

· Tone Color – bugle, bagpipes, calypso instruments

· Dynamics – dynamics influence how music affects listeners

· Tempo – tempo influences how music affects listeners

· Style/Background – music helps people express joy and sorrow, work songs, music as inspiration for peace, New Orleans jazz funeral, music at Ground Zero, military funerals, African work songs, Caribbean, American work songs

Unit 7

· Rhythm – triplets, tied rhythms in 2/2, performing rhythm patterns in 6/8

· Melody – glissandos

· Texture – singing in two and three parts

· Form/Structure – theme and variations

· Tone Color – aerophones, idiophones, chordophones, membranophones, electrophones, vocal tone color, speaking voice, voiced sounds, katadjait (throat songs)

· Style/Background – popular dance music, line dancing with a street game, Civil War music, opera and Broadway connections

Unit 8

· Rhythm – dotted eighths and equal eighths, drum cadence, polyrhythms, calypso rhythms, dotted rhythms in a Native American song

· Melody – modulation

· Texture – multiple layers of rhythm patterns, polyrhythms, layered rhythms in Brazilian dance music, singing in two and three parts

· Form/Structure – call and response

· Tone Color – found instruments, steel drums, vocables, instruments imitating sounds of nature

· Articulation – trumpet fanfare

· Style/Background – music in celebrations of national holidays, patriotic music, a Jewish Sabbath song, a popular American song, music of the civil rights movements in South Africa and the United States, a history of our national anthem, roots of calypso style in folk music of Trinidad, an inter-tribal Native American song, combining Native American and traditional European concert-style music in a composition, Brazilian dance music, unconventional Chinese composition

Unit 9

· Rhythm – quarter-eighth triplets in 4/4, African percussion patterns, dotted sixteenths, dotted eighths, accents on the offbeat

· Harmony – descant, singing in four parts, chord roots, I, IV, and V chords, singing in two parts in open fifths

· Form/Structure – tone poem, call and response

· Articulation – communicating the meaning of staccato without words

· Style/Background – protest music, world music, a multinational ensemble performance, Mexican and Canadian influences on American music, a Yoruban folk song