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Musical Contexts SQUILT |
What Makes a Good Song? -
Cover and Homework Activities |
What Makes a Good Song? -
Popular Songs Case Studies |
What Makes a Good Song? -
Scheme of Work and Lesson Pathways |
What Makes a Good Song? -
Scheme of Work and Lesson Pathways Includes Scheme of Work Overview,
Unit Learning Objectives, Learning Outcomes and Lesson Pathways. |
What Makes a Good Song? -
General Resources |
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What Makes a Good Song? -
DOITNOW (Starters) and Plenary Activities |
What Makes a Good Song? -
“DOITNOW” Presentation Cutting down on printables, file
storage and media files, the “new look” Musical Contexts “DOITNOW” What Makes a Good
Song? lesson openers
Presentation contains a wealth (only
two samples shown here), of effective “DOITNOW’s” when delivering the What Makes a Good
Song? unit in just one place
- all audio and video files are embedded and there’s accompanying Teacher’s
Notes in the “slide comments” section.
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What Makes a Good Song? -
Plenary Review Activities A series of lesson reviews where
pupils review their learning and understanding. |
What Makes a Good Song? -
5 Minutes Silent Reading For teachers who prefer to begin
their lessons with quiet, focused openers.
All contain “Questions to Think About” which can also be used as Cover
or Homework tasks. |
1. What Makes a
Good Song? 2. Song
Structure 3. Lead Sheets 4. Primary and
Secondary Chords 5. Song
Textures 6.
Song Timbres and Sonorities |
What Makes a Good Song? -
Music Theory and Melodic Dictation |
What Makes a Good
Song? Theory - Melodic Motion: Conjunct and Disjunct Exploring melody lines in songs from different times and places in
terms of melodic motion and movement using the terms Conjunct (stepwise) and
Disjunct (leaps) |
What Makes a Good
Song? — Melodic Dictation Treble clef melodic dictation from riffs and melodies of famous
popular songs. Answers provided. All of the
accompanying audio extracts are provided on the audio file. |
What Makes a Good Song? -
Song Structure Resources |
This unit consists of a
series of short, structured, exploratory and investigatory activities into
the genre of popular song in terms of the different structural, textural and
elemental components in order to provide a more in-depth answer to the unit’s
title: ‘What Makes a Good Song?’ The unit focuses primarily on
popular songs and where possible, pupils should be given the opportunity to
sing all of the songs explored. Pupils explore song structure
and how a typical popular song is made up of different structural elements
before exploring (or revisiting) primary (I, IV, V and V7) and secondary
chords (VI), song textures and instruments,
timbres and sonorities used to accompany popular songs. Hooks are Riffs in popular songs are
explored briefly and this provides a good foundation for the future study of
the
Musical Contexts “Hooks
and Riffs” unit that covers the use of Hooks and
Riffs in popular music in greater detail.
Through a series of
performing and listening tasks, pupils use lead sheets of popular songs to
perform parts from and to analyse musical features from which introduces them
to this form of musical notation. Two ‘good’ songs have been
chosen as case studies within this unit: “Shape of
You” by Ed Sheeran and “Shotgun”
by George Ezra although these can be
replaced depending on individual teacher preference. This
is not a “songwriting” unit, but through the exploration and analyses of
popular songs, it does provide valuable skills, knowledge and understanding
to prepare pupils to create their own complete musical arrangement of a song which is covered within the
Musical
Contexts “Making Arrangements”
unit. |
Key Words,
Concepts and Musical Knowledge |
Popular Song Structure: Introduction (intro),
Verse(s), Link, Pre-Chorus, Chorus, Bridge/Middle 8, Coda (outro); Strophic,
Riff, Hook, Melody, Counter-Melody, Lyrics, Chords and Traids, Primary Chords
(I, IV, V, V7), Secondary Chords (VI), Bass Line, Song Textures: Monophonic
(Solo), Homophonic (Melody and Accompaniment), Polyphonic; Lead Sheets. |
Music Theory |
Primary (I, IV, V, V7) and Secondary (VI) Chords |
Links to GCSE
Music |
Popular Music Vocal Music Conventions of Pop |
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Ed Sheeran - “Shape
of You” Songsheet/Leadsheet Contains Lyrics, Easy Bass Line, Bass Line,
Chords, Easy Riff, Harder Riff, Guitar Chords and Melody Line Parts for
classroom ensemble performing. |
George Ezra -
“Shotgun” Songsheet/Leadsheet Contains Lyrics, Chords, Guitar Chords and Two
Riffs from “Shotgun” for classroom ensemble performing. |
Analysing the Form
and Structure of “Shape of You” and “Shotgun” Lyrics for structural analysis of both case
study songs with answers. |
Analysing the
Melodies of “Shape of You” and “Shotgun” Melody lines/Riffs of both case study songs
for “Step and Leap” analysis. |
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Exploring your own
Favourite Song Pupils explore and analyse two contrasting
songs by the same artist or group in terms of the Elements of Music and the
popular song elements explored in this unit: Structure, Lyrics, Riffs and
Instruments. Also includes a “Full Marks” and “Low Marks”
example response with teacher’s comments.
Can be done without using ICT. |
A word search covering key words and terms
from the unit. Can be done without using ICT. |
Staged composition task for pupils to create a
punk band and write a set of lyrics to a punk song on subject matter of their
choice. Requires ICT for research. |
Another word search covering key words and
terms from the unit. Can be done without using ICT. |
Pop Groups and Artists from 1960 Word Search Another larger word search of notable pop
groups and performers from 1960 onwards.
Can be done without using ICT. |
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Useful worksheet for introducing the Drum Kit
and the names of the various parts. |
Listening to Riffs
in Popular Songs |
Card sort to rank features of what makes this
a good song and performing the melody and riff to “Praise You” |
Performing Two
famous Riffs from Popular Songs Arrangements of the riffs from “Bittersweet
Symphony” - The Verve and “Glory Box” - Portishead |
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Listening to
“Wannabe” - The Spice Girls |
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Listening to
“Wayfaring Stranger” - Eva Cassidy |
Listening to “Give
Me One Reason” - Tracy Chapman |
Staged process in composing a popular song |
Listening activities based on 3 different
Heavy Metal/Rock Songs
Audio 9 - “The Rain Song” - Led Zeppelin & “Paranoid” - Black
Sabbath |
Learning about
Popular Songs in the 1960’s Presentation with embedded audio examples of
Motown, Soul, Rock and Rhythm and Blues as examples of Popular Songs from the
1960’s |
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Listening for Riffs
in Rap and R’n’B Songs |
Listening to “Jump”
- Kriss Kross |
Ed Sheeran - “Castle
on the Hill” Lead Sheet Lyrics, Chord Patterns (Ukulele, Guitar and
Keyboard Chord Diagrams), Bass Line Riffs & Melody Lines with chords and
with and without note names. |
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Exploring Song
Structure Presentation Introduces pupils to key elements of song
structure through increasingly complex analysis and listening tasks including
analysis of ‘Scarborough Fair’, ‘Fast Car’ and ‘Stand by Me’. Contains all embedded media files. |
Exploring Song
Structure Worksheet Contains the song lyrics to all songs explored
within the Song Structure Presentation as ‘plan text’ for pupils to analyse
and format. |