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Year 7 - Music

Extending and refining creative ideas

Making music together

Unit Summary

This unit develops pupils' confidence and enjoyment in making music, encouraging them to see themselves as musicians. They sing as a group, develop composition skills, and revisit key musical terms to engage thoughtfully with the elements of music and use them creatively and expressively.

Lesson Summary

You will learn to develop a musical idea and compose a piece of music which balances the use of repetition and new ideas.

Key Notes

  • We can refine musical ideas by thinking about the melodic shape and choice of notes.
  • ABA is a common structure. It starts and finishes with the same idea (A) and uses a contrasting idea (B) in the middle.
  • This gives music a balance of unity and variety, making it interesting and memorable.
  • We have composed a piece of music in an ABA structure, using the elements of music appropriately to depict an image.

Vocabulary To Learn

  • motif: a short musical idea that recurs throughout a piece of music
  • melodic shape: the outline of a melodic idea and the shape that's created with the different pitches
  • ABA structure: a structure consisting of three sections of music where the first and last section are the same and the middle section is different

Common Mistakes To Avoid

  • The A sections in a musical structure which has a repeated A section have to be the same.

3 Quick Questions (With Answers)

1. Explain the lesson in two key points.

We can refine musical ideas by thinking about the melodic shape and choice of notes. ABA is a common structure. It starts and finishes with the same idea (A) and uses a contrasting idea (B) in the middle.

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

a short musical idea that recurs throughout a piece of music.

3. Correct this common mistake.

Mistake: The A sections in a musical structure which has a repeated A section have to be the same. Correction: Strong musical ideas usually have a balance of unity and variety, so even when a section is repeated, providing the main melodic idea is recognisable there can be some small changes which then helps to find this balance.

More Lessons In This Unit

Browse all guides in the Year 7 Music guide library.