I teach instrumental music at five schools throughout the School District of Philadelphia, spending one day at each school per week. This fact determines that I will see each student once weekly at maximum. Within each school, all students visit a specialist music teacher for general music classes weekly, where they learn the elements of music as well as perform by singing and playing classroom instruments. Students receive a report card grade for this experience. Students who play band and orchestra instruments are also enrolled in a weekly lesson period, and within that time, they rehearse material that will be used for performance in our seasonal concerts. I understand that I teach an elective class, and although students receive an additional report card grade for the work they do in my class, this does not prevent some students (and some of their subject and grade-level teachers as well) from stretching their understanding of my class from “elective” to “extracurricular.” In spite of this, I continue to maintain high expectations of students in my programs, and they consistently produce quality work at seasonal performances, which can usually only be accomplished through at-home practice. With the seasonal concert taking its place as the culminating experience of instrumental music instruction at many of my schools, one can often times feel as if one is “teaching to the test.”

I regularly use an end-of-term survey with students to discover more information about their musical interests, in regard to genre preferences, song requests, and the like, in order to program repertoire that will have meaning to them. In doing so, I can incorporate some of their choices into the repertoire while still programming some of the essential works of their idiom along with technical exercises such as scales and arpeggios. With this unit, the goal will be for students to identify their own musical preferences and their interconnectedness to ultimately create a short concert program in its entirety—outside the programs that I direct. Through this process, the students will gain knowledge of music history in general and American music history specifically, discovers some of the factors that inform their music choices, and the relationships between different genres of music. In addition, they will begin to understand the role of the music director in an ensemble regarding music programming and preparation before the rehearsals can even begin.

Students will be able to determine a list of music genres that are personally relevant through self-reflection and group discussion.

Students will be able to identify characteristic artists and songs of their chosen genre.

Students will be able to identify similarities between musical genres and time periods.

Students will be able to explain the history of performance of their chosen genre.

Students will be able to develop their instrumental performance skills on their chosen instrument through work within the ensemble and home practice.

Students will be able to improve their music theory skills thorough melodic transcription and arranging.

Students will be able to utilize music notation software to create short musical pieces to be performed by the ensemble.

Students will be able to demonstrate ability to present a program of original arrangements for the school community.

The Core Curriculum of the School District of Philadelphia is aligned to the Pennsylvania Academic Standards for Arts and Humanities. The standards include instruction in the following areas: Production, Performance, and Exhibition of Dance, Music, Theatre and Visual Arts, Historical and Cultural Contexts, Critical Response, and Aesthetic Response. The first part of this unit deals with the investigation of music genre choices as an expression of one’s identity deal primarily with social and cultural contexts, though the students will have to place their songs and genres on a historical timeline. The second part of the unit, including the culminating experience of a student-directed performance, so performance- and production-based standards apply as well. As this unit has been intended for late-middle school to early-high school students, the Standards selected are from the eighth grade level of the Pennsylvania Academic Standards.

I will note that this unit is targeted at a performance ensemble, namely 7^th and 8^th grade band, at a neighborhood elementary school in Philadelphia. As such, all of the participants in the class will have at least two years of experience on their instrument. At this point in their development, every student in the group will be able to identify whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes and rests, identify notes of the treble and bass clef staves, identify the time signatures 4/4, 3/4, 2/4, 3/8, and 6/8, identify key signatures in concert B-flat and concert F, and be able to play one-octave concert B-flat, F, and chromatic scales. With this amount of prior knowledge, the students have some degree of flexibility to perform the arrangements that will be made, without every song necessitating a transposition to the same key. I understand the realities of teaching music in public school, and the amount of prior knowledge and skill development may not be at this level in every school, and some schools may want to challenge the students further. Teachers who choose to use this unit in a vocal music ensemble or general music class may find the performance requirement of this unit not to be appropriate; that is, if the vocal performance constitutes printing the lyrics to a pop song and singing from there, students are missing the point—while general music classes may not feel they should require their students to perform. To make full use of all the exercises in this unit, I would recommend that teachers of vocal or general music use instruments as available (guitars, keyboards, ukuleles, recorders, xylophones) to create an accompaniment to voice parts or to work out the arrangement from the start. The unit can be tailored to fit the needs of the school in question, either by simplifying the requirements or adding to them. The workbook, One-Minute Theory, Book One, is a good companion for students to practice note and rhythm identification drills that are not at the standard required by the teacher, or for students to simply increase their proficiency in music theory skills.

Self-Reflection

Students will begin the unit by looking inward; the unit is predicated on the musical identities they are choosing to present. Students will be prompted to investigate the possible influences for their musical preferences, which can include their friends, parents, grandparents, school, church, music teacher, and other cultural influences. Students will also have the opportunity to examine their media consumption habits, for example, which movies, television shows, YouTube videos, radio stations, and Spotify playlists they prefer, how actively they attend to their social media presence, and in which stores they prefer to shop. These non-musical factors are all part of the socializing forces that determine students’ collections of experiences and will have an influence on the way each student arrives at their favored artists and genres.

Group Discussion/Group Projects

The nature of the ensemble rehearsal is inherently collegial; cooperation is necessary for learning to take place and for the rehearsal to be successful. In the course of reflecting on their music preferences, some students will inevitably want to share their findings with the class, while some will be more private. As an equalizing agent, the class will publicly display a list at first, and later, a timeline that follows the chronology of artists and genres through recent history—or as far back as one wants or needs to proceed. Working backward is a way to uncover music history sequentially in the classroom, since students will be more invested in and attached to historical subjects when they have a frame of reference.

Online Research

Teachers will assist the students in researching their genre, uncovering the lineage of the tradition that caused their genre to be identified as individual. Students will research artists who characterize this style, in addition to tracing chart performance of individual songs or albums. Also, students will be able to identify certain award categories that have come and gone that signify their chosen music genre, as well as the songs, albums, artists, songwriters, and even producers behind award winners. The best resource to trace hit singles and top albums, by genre (Hot 100, Pop, Adult Contemporary, Adult Pop Songs, Hot R&B, Mainstream Rock, Dance Club Songs, the list goes on,) is Billboard (www.billboard.com,) and the source for popular Record, Album, and Song of the Year is The Recording Academy (www.grammy.com.)

Music Technology

Students will use the open-source music notation software MuseScore (www.musescore.org) to transcribe and arrange their pop songs for their final performance. Users can create and edit music scores in the program, print individual instrument or voice parts, save their work, and share the editable score files or PDFs of their compositions. The interface of MuseScore is quite intuitive; a quick tutorial can show students (and their teachers, depending on one’s familiarity with the program) the main features of the program and how to employ them effectively. Users can start with the demo score (which opens when the program opens) to experiment with the interface. To enter notes, one simply clicks the measure where the music will start, clicks the type of note desired in the toolbar, and presses the letter of the desired note, A though G, on the (qwerty) keyboard. Users can also click the position on the staff for the desired note, if they choose, or if one has MIDI keyboards connected to computers, input notes by playing the keys on the keyboard in step-time or real-time (the keyboard input method is not likely to be applicable to many schools, outside music magnet high schools.) One can change the pitch with the up or down arrows on the keyboard, enter sharps, flats, or naturals by clicking the corresponding button in the toolbar, drag-and-drop repeats and changed key signatures or time signatures, copy and paste sections of the score in other places, and transpose parts for multiple instruments. There are many, many levels of undo for correcting mistakes. Since students rarely practice handwriting in English, trying to teach them to handwrite in music (though I feel it is still a valuable skill) for the purposes of creating something that their classmates have to play and their teacher has to grade is an ineffective use of class time. And think of all the erasing! The time saved by using music notation software over handwriting gives students more time to engage in higher-order skills such as creating the arrangement in the first place, and getting on to practicing and performing their original works.

MuseScore also has a social component—if a user registers an email address with their website, one can browse thousands of scores that the community of MuseScore users have uploaded to the site for other users to save, print, edit, add/subtract instruments, change keys/instrument ranges, and generally use at will. Students can share their arrangements with the MuseScore community if they choose. The computer science teacher or technology supervisor can install MuseScore on multiple machines in the lab, as it is a free-to-use program; the tough part may be reserving the lab for your students to do their projects.

This examination of music genre preferences is meant to accompany all concurrent music-making objectives of the ensemble and enhance the historical and cultural experience of the students in it. The usual rehearsal procedures will continue to take place—set-up and tuning, warm-up, technical exercises, ensemble/blend exercises, rehearsal of repertoire, and enrichment. Music theory skills practice, via One-Minute Theory lessons should continue. Since this class meets only once a week, momentum can be hard to maintain during this project if one does not commit to revisiting the unit at each class. Rather than supplant entire class periods to complete this unit, I envisioned the discussion and reflection portions of the project to take the beginning block of time during rehearsals, like an extended “Do Now.” Ideally, in a 45-minute class, the first 15 minutes of the class can be spent working on components of this unit, and the final 30 minutes consist of an abridged rehearsal to continue to maintain instrumental skills and musical sensitivity. Some class periods will need to be set aside for work on the unit, such as the music notation software tutorial. For as much as music teachers may dislike “teaching to the test,” the school will have performance expectations and commitments that need to be met, and this unit is not meant to provide all of the repertoire for the traditional concerts.

Activity One: Music Personality Survey and Follow-Up

This activity can be completed with group discussion or pen-and-paper; I would leave the choice up to the teacher to choose the more effective method. The teacher should prepare to ask the following questions: What styles of music do you listen to? Who are your favorite recording artists? Do you play any instruments, or did you ever? What radio stations do you listen to? How else do you consume music (YouTube, Spotify, Pandora)? What TV shows do you watch? What are your favorite movies? Where are your favorite places to shop? If the teacher has a dedicated teaching space, the teacher can list the answers on the board, but it may be more useful to enter the answers into an Excel spreadsheet. Alternatively, teachers can format the survey questions into a Google Doc and share the link with their students to complete at home, which will automatically populate a spreadsheet with their data. I prefer to administer the survey in class, because students are forced to make quick decisions (which may reveal more accurate answers) and not have time to get too clever with their responses. The students should also retain a copy of their answers for the purposes of the follow-up exercises.

While I prefer quick reaction time for their first set of answers, I want students to reflect on these answers for follow-up activities. To prepare for the next class meeting, assign students to administer the same music personality test to their parents. In doing so, we can trace musical listening habits through generations. Students can also give the test to someone of a different generation, for example, a grandparent, aunt or uncle, classroom teacher, religious leader, and others—even significantly older siblings or cousins, who may not technically be of a different generation, will likely have vastly different set of musical experiences that should yield unique answers. Students will be tasked to examine the similarities and differences between their answers and those of people in different generations, and think about the reasons these similarities exist. A few examples of student answers are listed below:

Mainstream pop music fan: “I listen to Q102 on the way to school with my mom, and she lets me pick the music.”

Mainstream rock music fan: “My dad listens to 1990s alternative all the time.”

Dance music fan: “Saturday Night Fever is my favorite movie.”

R&B fan: “My friends and I know all the words to ‘24K Magic.’”

Classical music fan: “I started playing the violin when I was 4, and I try to play my music along to the recordings.”

Country music fan: “I like to wear boots and a cowboy hat.”

Spanish-language music fan: “My mom went to grade school with Shakira.”

Indie rock music fan: “Check out this band from the FIFA 17 soundtrack.”

Some of these answers are more unlikely than others, though that does not mean they are less valid. It is important that students start thinking critically in a performance-based class, where they are used to reproducing the sounds represented by the notes on the page. The results of this critical thinking exercise can give students the foundations necessary for building the music history timeline in the next exercise.

Activity Two: Music History Timeline

The results of the music personality survey and investigation of those results will form the start of the music history timeline. Start by listing all the favored music genres on a chart or Excel spreadsheet. Then, demonstrate the online research tools (Billboard, The Recording Academy) that students will use to fill in the following information: for each genre, list artists representative of the genre, songs characteristic of the genre, years the artists were active, and any historical or cultural markers of significance (for example, 1960s folk music coincided with the anti-Vietnam War movement, 1960s and 1970s soul music with the struggle for civil rights for African Americans.) The students will be tasked to bring the information, while the teacher will have to fill in the gaps when needed. Class discussion is useful for determining the connections between genres of different generations, and teacher knowledge will help to shape this chart. The students should look for direct connections between genres (similar style, similar instruments/voices, similar song form, similar audiences intended for each genre, and similar culture represented by each genre) in the following way:

Jazz/Louis Armstrong/”What a Wonderful World”/1920s-1960s

Blues/T-Bone Walker/”Stormy Monday”/1920s-1970s

Rhythm and Blues/Louis Jordan/”Saturday Night Fish Fry”/1930s-1960s

Rock ‘n’ Roll/Little Richard/”Tutti Frutti”/1940s-present

Motown/Diana Ross/”Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”/1960s-present

Soul/Marvin Gaye/”What’s Going On”/1960s-1980s

Funk/Kool and the Gang/”Hollywood Swinging”/1960s-present

1970s R&B/Jackson 5/”I Want You Back”/1960s-1980s

1980s R&B/Lionel Richie/”All Night Long”/1970s-present

1990s R&B/Mariah Carey/”Hero”/1990s-present

2000s R&B/Bruno Mars/”Uptown Funk”/200s-present

While this list is nowhere near exhaustive, it is obvious that there can be contention in the assignment of artists to genres, decades, years active, and cultural relationships. From a quick look at this list, one can tell that this is an example of African American music roughly spanning the 1920s to today. However, questions abound: does Louis Armstrong’s output in this thread count as jazz, or was it pop back then? Should he really count for the 1920s to the 1950s, since “What a Wonderful World” is his most famous song, and wasn’t recorded until late in his life? Didn’t T-Bone Walker do roots blues (folk) records? Does rock ‘n’ roll music belong in this thread, since Elvis is white? Does Lionel Richie also count as funk, from playing with the Commodores? Does the Jackson 5 represent the 1970s? What about all of the Jackson siblings’ solo careers? Michael? Janet? Is Bruno Mars ripping off half of the artists on this list with his retro vibe? Doesn’t Mariah Carey sing sappy pop songs? With high notes? Isn’t she on American Idol? Then she has to be pop! The resulting discussions and spider webs that will result from these discussions will see artists crossing genres, genres crossing artists, artists crossing decades, and political movements using and being used by the artists participating in the time. It will be interesting to see what The Recording Academy and Billboard say about the artists and genres that the students bring in. One must also remember that most of these labels are retroactively added to define genres of music, or are applied to make certain demographics appealing to advertisers.

For extra credit, students can look for secondary connections between stylistic conventions of different critical listening to connections that may be missed by inexperienced listeners (see Kanye West use samples of Curtis Mayfield, or the Beastie Boys use samples of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.)

Activity Three: Transcribing and Arranging with MuseScore

The students in this class will select, transcribe, and arrange the performance literature for the final project in this unit. The teacher will help the students to select songs that are representative of their chosen genres, and help them to choose appropriate parts of the songs to transcribe for the assembly. The selections will need to be short (~1 minute each) since there are many students who will have to present work, and some students will need a starting note or notes to create an accurate transcription. The guidelines for the arrangement will be to notate at least the melody and a bass line, while a harmony part will yield extra credit. Students must assign parts to the instruments in our ensemble, which are those of a standard concert band (flutes, clarinets, alto and tenor saxophones, trumpets, trombones, horns, percussion) plus guitar and piano, if they choose. Students may wish to add string parts (violin, viola, cello, double bass) and/or vocal parts if they desire.

The teacher is responsible for directing the MuseScore tutorial, but the students will be able to work independently to complete their arrangements while the teacher is available for troubleshooting. This is the part of the unit that requires independent work—and if students need additional time, they may have to schedule use of the computer lab for more sessions. However, since MuseScore is a free program, students can save their work in school, upload it to their Google Drive, Dropbox, or other cloud storage, and download it on their home computer to continue. Unfortunately, there is no music notation feature in iOS/Android MuseScore apps, only the ability to save, open, or play back existing arrangements. The fact that MuseScore is open-source could mean that music notation features within the apps are coming in the near future, but this is not confirmed.

Final: Concert/Assembly

After the completion of most of the arrangements, the teacher will add them to the rehearsal schedule. The songs should be short and relatively easy for most instruments, compared to their regular ensemble repertoire, and are meant to showcase the work they have done to create original versions of their favorite music genres. This activity is the culmination of the class taking ownership for the direction of this performance. The teacher’s job is to rehearse the music, while the students must do everything else: they must schedule a date for the performance, reserve a performance space, create a program, promote the event, and emcee the proceedings, in addition to showing up and playing well. The teacher can assign jobs to students according to their preferences and skills—a student with a particularly good relationship with the main office may be the ideal choice to meet with administration to ask for a date and to book a space. Students should also look at incorporating their work into an existing school event, such as an arts festival, multicultural celebration, history day, and the like.

Reading List

Ake, David. Jazz Cultures. University of California Press, 2002.

Ake describes an array of cultural identities that jazz communities have shaped jazz throughout the twentieth century. The first chapter deals with the origins of jazz in New Orleans, and the conflict between two disparate groups of the African Diaspora living next to each other.

Brackett, David. “Popular Music Genres: Aesthetics, Commerce and Identity.” The

SAGE Handbook of Popular Music, edited by Andy Bennett and Steve Waksman, SAGE Publications, Ltd., 2015, pp. 189-206.

This article addresses the application of genre names to categories of music and their implications through the twentieth century. Brackett explains how genre categories serve radio stations, record companies, and advertisers, in addition to the musical artists and the audiences themselves, with an understanding of how the art is somehow different, and to what the differences mean.

Garrett, Charles Hiroshi. Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music and the

Twentieth Century. University of California Press, 2008.

Garrett’s book expands upon several issues that inform the dialogue that seeks to identify exactly what constitutes “American” music. It reveals that in absence of one solitary tradition, American music is the combination of experiences from diverse segments of the population and the result is more “mosaic” than “melting pot.” Garrett explores Western art music in the European tradition, ragtime, jazz, Latin and Afro-Latin music, and Asian and Hawaiian stereotypes in the mold of Tin Pan Alley pop songs.

Hall, Stuart, and Paddy Whannel. “The Young Audience.” On Record: Rock, Pop, and

the Written Word, edited by Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, Pantheon, 1990, pp. 27-37.

Hall and Whannel discuss the anxieties over the youth audiences of 1964 Britain as targets of mass media, as they characterized them as a generation who participated in conspicuous personal consumption (of extravagances such as music, films, clothing, food, and drink.) They also address the influence the personal style of music artists has on young audiences, and the way the young audiences are able to direct their own narrative.

Miller, Karl Hagstrom. Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of

Jim Crow. Duke University Press, 2010.

This text addresses discrepancies between the history of southern music and the generic identifiers applied to it in order to link certain attributes to race. The experience of southern musicians of all races in the early twentieth century was that everyone played almost all kinds of music—not only “southern” genres such as blues, ragtime, and old-time music, but also Broadway show tunes, Tin Pan Alley numbers, and national hit songs.

Peterson, Richard. Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. University of

Chicago Press, 1997.

Peterson describes the origins of country music, from the early recordings of Fiddlin’ John Carson. He traces the lineage of country music from “old-time” string band music, through “hillbilly,” country, and western monikers. Peterson also discusses the meaning of the label “authentic” that has been applied to country music as it operates within popular music culture.

Rentfrow, Peter, Jennifer McDonald, and Julian Oldmeadow. “You Are What You

Listen To: Young People’s Stereotypes about Music Fans.” Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, vol. 12, no. 3, 2009, pp. 329-344.

This article publishes the results of a study of 80 British young adults aimed at reproducing research on stereotypes that young people have about fans of various music genres. The results indicated that participants agreed that the psychological and social characteristics of music fans and that the results could be generalized. The implications of this study on negative stereotype formation were addressed.

Riesman, David. “Listening to Popular Music.” On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written

Word, edited by Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, Pantheon, 1990, pp. 5-13.

This article is early work in the study of youth popular music. Riesman addresses mass mediation and the youth market as a target for advertisers, and gives examples of interview subjects (more or less) blindly following trends to be able to fit in to a social group. Riesman also addresses rebellion within what would later become known as rock ‘n’ roll music, and the irony of the outsider, who bucks the established norms or the dominant social group only to conform to the norms of another social group.

Stratton, Jon. “Popular Music, Race and Identity.” The SAGE Handbook of Popular

Music, edited by Andy Bennett and Steve Waksman, SAGE Publications Ltd., 2015, pp. 381-400.

This article addresses race within the scope of popular music, most notably the United States, where there has been an accepted divide between “black” and “white” music in the way music is accepted and though about. The article also serves to address matters of other races and ethnicities (Native American, Asian, Latino) and how they fit within this binary system.

Turino, Thomas. Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. University of

Chicago Press, 2008.

This is an introductory text in ethnomusicology that examines the commonality of music and dance at the center of cultures worldwide throughout history. Turino references the role music has as an indicator of the self and identity, as music is commonly seen as a way for one to belong to certain groups and not others, and that distinct music genres are attached to social and cultural formations.

Teacher Resources

The anthology Music Education: Source Readings from Ancient Greece to Today, contains a wealth of resources concerning the history of music education, the sociology of music education, and calls for advocacy for music education that are continuing today. The readings used for researching this curriculum unit are all drawn from “Part III: American Views Since 1950.” The first set of readings are all from the section entitled, ‘Music Education and Society.’ The views expressed here focus on a diversifying American public school population and the discrepancies between that and the traditional, Euro-centric, conservative model of what music education “should” look like. The matters at play here are traditional music education’s decreasing relevance to the “average” American student and said student’s decreasing participation in music programs. The section entitled ‘School Music Program Development’ features the text release from both the Yale Seminar and the Tanglewood Symposium that would help to shape music instruction in the tumult of the 1960s, including the adoption of new musics to the music education curriculum, including jazz, pop, folk, and ethnic musics.

Campbell, Patricia Shehan. “Multiculturalism and School Music.” Music Education:

Source Readings from Ancient Greece to Today, edited by Michael Mark, Routledge, 2002, pp. 225-226.

Choksy, Lois, et al. Teaching Music in the Twenty-First Century. 2^nd ed., Prentice Hall,

2001.

This book gives great background information on matters of music education, including large conferences such as the Yale Seminar and the Tanglewood Institute, where reforms dealing with quality of education and diversity of discourse were introduced. There is also a chapter on technological advances within the music education field to support teachers and students.

Florida Department of Education. “Multicultural Arts Education.” Music Education:

Source Readings from Ancient Greece to Today, edited by Michael Mark, Routledge, 2002, pp. 228-229.

Froehlich, Hildegard. Sociology for Music Teachers: Perspectives for Practice. Pearson

Prentice Hall, 2007.

This text examines the history and development of the social factors that affect students’ values, tastes, and attitudes that school music teachers confront on a daily basis. She makes a case for attempting to bridge the gap between “school” music and “life” music. Froehlich argues that knowledge of sociology impacts the selection of materials, methods, and teaching strategies by which teachers effectively communicate with their students.

Jorgensen, Estelle. “On Spheres of Musical Validity.” Music Education: Source

Readings from Ancient Greece to Today, edited by Michael Mark, Routledge, 2002, pp. 223-225.

Mark, Michael. “An Appreciation of Diversity.” Music Education: Source Readings

from Ancient Greece to Today. Edited by Michael Mark, Routledge, 2002, pp. 222-223.

The Tanglewood Symposium. “A Philosophy of the Arts for an Emerging Society.”

Music Education: Source Readings from Ancient Greece to Today, edited by Michael Mark, Routledge, 2002, pp. 254-263.

Yale Seminar on Music Education. “Music in Our Schools: A Search for Improvement.”

Music Education: Source Readings from Ancient Greece to Today, edited by Michael Mark, Routledge, 2002, pp. 249-252.

Student Resources

Slabbinck, Ronald, and Holly Shaw-Slabbinck. One-Minute Theory, Book One. Neil A.

Kjos Music Company, 2005.

This is a valuable workbook that introduces music theory to young people in a gradual, accessible way. This text is essential for young musicians looking to develop their music theory skills, and is applicable to students of any instrument or voice. Note reading, rhythm exercises, clef identification, key and time signatures, interval relationships, and harmonic study are included in this first volume of the series.

Billboard.com, Billboard Music, 2017, www.billboard.com. Accessed 9 May 2017.

Billboard.com is the official website of Billboard Music, which is known for music charts, such as the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200, which track the most popular singles and albums of different music genres. Billboard also publishes a weekly magazine geared toward music and entertainment industry news and special interest pieces.

Grammy, The Recording Academy, 2017, www.grammy.com. Accessed 29 April 2017.

This is the official website of The Recording Academy, a group of musicians, producers, recording engineers, and other recording professionals. The Recording Academy is also the organization that presents the Grammy Awards, which are some of the most prestigious awards in recorded music.

MuseScore, MuseScore BVBA, 2017, www.musescore.org. Accessed 8 April 2017.

This is an open-source music notation software application that students will use to create the arrangements for their final project. The interface is intuitive and can be installed on multiple platforms with equal ease of use. MuseScore also has a community feature that allows for arrangement sharing to a database that allows for specific search terms, titles, composers, number of instruments, or instrumentation.

9.1.8.A Know and use the elements (duration, intensity, pitch, timbre) and principles (composition, form, genre, harmony, rhythm, texture) of music to create works in the arts and humanities.

9.1.8.B Recognize, know, use and demonstrate a variety of appropriate arts elements (sing, play an instrument, read and notate music, compose and arrange, improvise) and principles to produce, review and revise original works in the arts.

9.1.8.C Identify and use comprehensive vocabulary within each of the arts forms.

9.1.8.D Demonstrate knowledge of at least two styles within each art form through performance or exhibition of unique works.

9.1.8.E Communicate a unifying theme or point of view through the production of works in the arts.

9.1.8.F Explain works of others within each art form through performance or exhibition.

9.1.8.G Explain the function and benefits of rehearsal and practice sessions.

9.1.8.H Demonstrate and maintain materials, equipment and tools safely at work and performance spaces.

9.1.8.J Incorporate specific uses of traditional and contemporary technologies within the design for producing, performing and exhibiting works in the arts or the works of others.

Explain and demonstrate traditional technologies (e.g., instruments.)

Explain and demonstrate contemporary technologies (e.g., MIDI keyboards, computers, audio/sound equipment.)

9.2.8.A Explain the historical, cultural and social context of an individual work in the arts.

9.2.8.B Relate works in the arts chronologically to historical events.

9.2.8.C Relate works in the arts to varying styles and genre and to the periods in which they were created.

9.2.8.D Analyze a work of art from its historical and cultural perspective.

9.2.8.E Analyze how historical events and culture impact forms, techniques and purposes of works in the arts.

9.2.8.G Relate works in the arts to geographic regions: Africa, Asia, Australia, Central America, Europe, North America, South America

9.2.8.I Identify, explain and analyze philosophical beliefs as they relate to works in the arts.