Music
The mission of the Music Department at Warlingham is to provide a safe, supportive and positive learning environment in which every student has the opportunity to flourish and fully develop their creative skills, which will, in turn, foster self-confidence, personal growth and a life-long appreciation for the Music.
Our intent is to engage all children in this subject irrespective of background, inspiring all children and promoting a sense of achievement, coupled with a life-long love of Music. We intend to challenge all children often resulting in many children achieving better than expected progress at both key stages and inspire them to choose a range of options for Music at KS4 and KS5.
The Core Concepts
In order to achieve these statements, students can expect lessons to include opportunities to:
- Play and perform confidently in a range of solo and ensemble contexts using their voice, playing instruments musically, fluently and with accuracy and expression.
- Improvise and compose, and extend and develop musical ideas by drawing on a range of musical structures, styles, genres and traditions.
- Use staff and the relevant notations appropriately and accurately in a range of musical styles, genres and traditions.
- Identify and use the inter-related dimensions of music expressively and with increasing sophistication, including use of tonalities, different types of scales and other musical devices.
- Listen with increasing discrimination to a wide range of music from great composers and musicians
- Develop a deepening understanding of the music that they perform and to which they listen, and its history.
key stage 3
Year 7
Melody writing and development. Arrangement of well-known melodies using Cubase music production software.
- What makes a great melody?
- How melodies are constructed?
Performance on keyboards and ukuleles of well-known repertoire ranging from Classical to Popular
Year 8
Arrangement of a well-known melody in a Theme and Variations structure. Composition in the style of Senegalese drumming leading to composition in a fusion style of classical and popular styles.
- What music from around our world are you aware of?
- Can you remix and fuse together a well-known classical and popular piece together?
Performance on keyboards and other instruments of well-known repertoire ranging from Classical to Popular.
Year 9
Arrangement and composition of film music using Cubase music production software. This leads into composition of Popular music using Soundtrap and Ableton Push software.
- What music technology software have you used at home?
Performances start with rehearsing and selecting a classic film theme and lead onto performing classic Popular music pieces in an ensemble or as a soloist.
- Which well known pieces of Popular music would you like to perform?
key stage 4
WJEC Eduqas GCSE in Music
In GCSE Music, students develop their competencies to perform as a soloist and in an ensemble, leading to recordings in the studio.
Students compose two pieces of music using Noteflight or Cubase, one in a Classical style and the other is a free-choice.
In Listening, we study Form, Structure, Music for Ensembles, Film Music and Popular Music. We also have two set works which we study in detail.
- What instrument would you perform on as a soloist and in an ensemble?
- If you could write a free composition – where would you start and what direction would it take?
key stage 5
WJEC Eduqas A Level Music (601/8146/1)
At A Level, students can choose to major in Performance or Composition.
They will compose 2 or 3 pieces of music and perform up to 15 minutes.
In the Listening exam, we cover the Symphony and 20th Century Music and then choose an option from Pop, Jazz or Music Theatre.
- Would you like to study Pop, Jazz or Music Theatre?
- Would you prefer to compose more or perform more?
Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Certificate in Music Performance
Students in BTEC study the theory and harmony of Music over the two years, creating PowerPoints, videos and blogs which demonstrate their knowledge and understanding.
All students will then develop their own 15 minute solo and ensemble performance sets and gig this to friends and family.