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Year 11 - Music

Developing texture

Composition exemplars: creating a varied composition

Unit Summary

Pupils analyse exemplar compositions to understand how repetition, contrast, texture and harmony are used effectively. They develop compositional understanding by exploring how musical ideas are varied, structured and developed across sections.

Lesson Summary

You will learn to analyse how a composition uses varied textures to create musical interest, variety and climax, and can create some textural variety in your own composition.

Key Notes

  • Texture is a very important aspect to consider when composing.
  • If used carefully, it can help a composer to create a varied and interesting composition with simple musical ideas.
  • As a composer, using textures that are idiomatic for the style or genre is important.
  • Varying the thickness of the texture is a simple way to add variety.
  • Using a mixture of polyphonic, homophonic and melody and accompaniment textures is also effective.

Vocabulary To Learn

  • texture: the number of different musical lines playing at the same time, and the way that they relate to each other
  • melody and accompaniment: a texture consisting of a clear melody and separate accompaniment
  • polyphonic: a texture where more than one equally important melodic line plays at the same time
  • homophonic: a texture where different musical lines use the same rhythm

Common Mistakes To Avoid

  • Creating variety in the texture means using every different type of texture.

3 Quick Questions (With Answers)

1. Explain the lesson in two key points.

Texture is a very important aspect to consider when composing. If used carefully, it can help a composer to create a varied and interesting composition with simple musical ideas.

2. What does this key word mean in this lesson? 'texture'

the number of different musical lines playing at the same time, and the way that they relate to each other.

3. Correct this common mistake.

Mistake: Creating variety in the texture means using every different type of texture. Correction: You can create variety in the texture by using different types of texture (e.g. polyphonic) but you can also create variety by varying the thickness of the texture. In many styles, this is a more common way to vary texture (e.g. pop and rock).

More Lessons In This Unit

Browse all guides in the Year 11 Music guide library.