Year 10 - Music
Instrumentation and metre in popular music
Introduction to pop music
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Unit Summary
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Lesson Summary
You will learn to aurally identify the instrumentation and metre in popular songs.
Key Notes
- Pop music has been around since the 1950s and includes many different genres.
- Pop music shares common features including instrumentation and structure.
- Instrumentation is which instruments and voices have been used.
- Most pop songs have vocals, piano/guitar, bass guitar and drums, although more modern pop uses synthesized instruments.
- Metre is the organisation of bars and beats. Most pop songs have four beats in a bar or a 4/4 time signature.
Vocabulary To Learn
- instrumentation: the combination and use of different instruments and voices in a song is referred to as instrumentation
- riff: a short recurring or repeated motif used in pop music
- synthesiser: an electronic musical instrument
- metre: the organisation of bars and beats in a piece of music
- time signature: this tells us how many beats are in a bar of music
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Synthesiser vs synthesised sound
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain the lesson in two key points.
Pop music has been around since the 1950s and includes many different genres. Pop music shares common features including instrumentation and structure.
2. What does this key word mean in this lesson? 'instrumentation'
the combination and use of different instruments and voices in a song is referred to as instrumentation.
3. Correct this common mistake.
Mistake: Synthesiser vs synthesised sound. Correction: You can use a synthesiser if you have one or show a youtube clip of one in action. Use keyboard and different sounds to explain synthesised.
More Lessons In This Unit
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