Year 11 - Music
Playing to an instrument's strengths
Composition exemplars: completing a composition
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This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
Pupils analyse exemplar compositions to understand how composers complete and refine a finished piece. They explore idiomatic writing, performance directions, instrumental writing and use of technology to produce effective, polished compositions.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to identify key considerations when composing for different instruments, and can exploit the strengths of different instruments in your own composition.
Key Notes
- Considering the strengths and weaknesses of instruments is important when composing.
- Making sure that the range suits each instrument and choosing suitable registers is crucial.
- We should also consider creating opportunities for woodwind and brass players to take breaths.
- Other considerations include the kind of intervals, dynamics and articulation that best suit the instrument.
- Considering using techniques or timbres that are unique to the instrument can help to play to its strengths as well.
Vocabulary To Learn
- range: the span of pitches that a particular instrument can play, from its lowest to its highest possible note
- register: a particular section of an instrument's range (for example, a specific octave)
- disjunct: where notes move by intervals of a third or larger, moving by leap
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Every instrument has a defined range.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain the lesson in two key points.
Considering the strengths and weaknesses of instruments is important when composing. Making sure that the range suits each instrument and choosing suitable registers is crucial.
2. What does this key word mean in this lesson? 'range'
the span of pitches that a particular instrument can play, from its lowest to its highest possible note.
3. Correct this common mistake.
Mistake: Every instrument has a defined range. Correction: Some instruments (e.g. piano) have a defined range, but not all. Woodwind and brass instruments, for example, have a typical 'normal' range, but advanced players can often play very high notes beyond the top of that range.
More Lessons In This Unit
Browse all guides in the Year 11 Music guide library.