Music

Head of Department: Mr Christmas PChristmas@woolwichpolyboys.co.uk

A successful Poly Musician will have open ears and an open mind. He will study Music to build confidence through performance and to develop self-discipline through rehearsal and preparation; a successful Poly Music student will know that good use of preparation time is essential to success in all areas of life. He will show team working skills and will develop the confidence to lead when he feels he can. He will be empathetic and respectful and allow himself and others to make mistakes as part of the process of improving. He will be willing to offer ideas and to try things out and to be honest but kind when evaluating his own and others’ work. He will realise that listening skills are like muscles - they need to be used and exercised in order to grow, and he will realise that listening is the fundamental skill of a musician. We study Music to develop transferable skills that we will inevitably use in all other areas of our learning, tapping into multiple skill sets often simultaneously, but a successful Poly Music student may not realise this because he is too busy having fun.

Key stage 3

• Music as a language - using an integrated, practical approach, students build up their musical skills and confidence through vocal copy-back and improvisation sessions.
• Transferring to instruments- using an aural approach, students learn to transfer sung parts onto instruments (trumpets/trombones/keyboards). This is based around at least 2 different songs “Shackles” and “Soweto” and involves instrument specific techniques.
• Improvisation into composition- Students gain confidence in creating short improvisations within a given framework through scaffolded and progressive activities. They then isolate parts of the improvisations that they like and want to keep and devise graphic style notation to remember their work.
• Integrating arrangement – Students learn parts of a song vocally (currently “Work” by Rihanna) such as bass line, melody, counter melody, chords. They transfer these to keyboards and work as pods to create original arrangements. This is revisited later using a more complex song (currently “Price Tag” by Jessie J)
• Transferring to music technology- Having learned the parts, students are shown how to transfer the parts to music technology and are shown some production techniques to help create their own individual version of the song, including improvisation sections.
• Musical detectives – students use their ears and a series of clues and video guides to help them recreate pieces of music using technology.

Key stage 4

Level 2 Vocational Award in Performing Arts (Technical award – through Music Technology) 

Assessment 

Controlled assessment and coursework