Year 5 - Music
Notating a minimalist piece
Compose and rehearse: creating and combining minimalist cells
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This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
This unit introduces minimalism with its repetitive, hypnotic, short musical cells. Pupils will use Terry Riley's In C to inspire their compositions. Working in groups, pupils will create short musical cells and decide how to use these to create and rehearse a larger minimalist piece.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to structure and notate a minimalist composition considering the most effective way to do this.
Key Notes
- We can experiment with structure, tempo and dynamics to create an effective minimalist composition.
- Notation helps us to share music and remember it for another day.
- Minimalist music can be notated in a variety of ways for effective decoding.
- Possible notation examples include stave notation, rhythm grids, graphic scores or written instructions.
Vocabulary To Learn
- structure: the way the music is organised
- dynamics: how loud or quiet the music is
- tempo: the speed of the music - how fast or slow the music is played
- notation: a way of visually representing and recording music
- score: the written form of a composition showing the notation and instructions for instruments or voices
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- All music is notated using stave notation.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain the lesson in two key points.
We can experiment with structure, tempo and dynamics to create an effective minimalist composition. Notation helps us to share music and remember it for another day.
2. What does this key word mean in this lesson? 'structure'
the way the music is organised.
3. Correct this common mistake.
Mistake: All music is notated using stave notation. Correction: Music should be notated in the most effective way for it to be decoded. This is often stave notation, but can be any way of sharing the musical intention successfully, for example rhythm grids or graphic scores.
More Lessons In This Unit
Browse all guides in the Year 5 Music guide library.