Year 10 - Music
Pop ballads from the 1970s to the 1990s
Extending understanding of pop music: pop ballads and modern pop
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This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
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Lesson Summary
You will learn to recognise key features of pop ballads and create a pop ballad chord sequence.
Key Notes
- Pop ballads typically use a slow tempo, romantic lyrics, diatonic harmony, 4/4 metre and a verse-chorus structure.
- A piano/keyboard is often prominent in pop ballads and strings or brass are commonly used to thicken the texture.
- Typical artists include Whitney Houston and Elton John.
- A mix of root position and chord inversions can be used when composing chord sequences to create interest.
- Chord inversions affect the bass line as it has to play the lowest note of each chord.
Vocabulary To Learn
- pop ballad: a pop ballad is an important genre of pop music - typically a slow song with romantic or sentimental lyrics
- diatonic: diatonic harmony uses only notes from within the key (major or minor)
- root position: a root position chord has the root note (the note in its name) at the bottom
- chord inversion: a chord inversion is a chord with the notes repositioned so that the root note is not the lowest note in the chord
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Chord inversions are inserted randomly by composers.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain the lesson in two key points.
Pop ballads typically use a slow tempo, romantic lyrics, diatonic harmony, 4/4 metre and a verse-chorus structure. A piano/keyboard is often prominent in pop ballads and strings or brass are commonly used to thicken the texture.
2. What does this key word mean in this lesson? 'pop ballad'
a pop ballad is an important genre of pop music - typically a slow song with romantic or sentimental lyrics.
3. Correct this common mistake.
Mistake: Chord inversions are inserted randomly by composers. Correction: Chord inversions are used to add interest by bringing subtle amounts of tension to a chord and to create smoother transitions from one chord to another. They are not chosen randomly and are used sparingly to create a particular effect.
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