Music Appreciation Unit 4

Music Appreciation

• Music consists of three main elements: melody, rhythm, and harmony.
• Music notation allows musicians to precisely locate and reproduce musical sounds using symbols that represent pitch and rhythm.
• Learning music enables students to:
  • Value and appreciate the diversity of music traditions from different parts of the world.
  • Develop an awareness of the ethical and environmental implications of their own practices.

Values of Music Appreciation

• This unit focuses on the idea of aesthetics, appreciation, and values of musical works.
• It teaches students how to appreciate and evaluate musical works in general.

Basic Elements of Music

• Rhythm: the beat or steady pulse of music, which includes duration (the length of each sound or silence).
• Pitch: represents the perceived fundamental frequency of a note, which can be graphically represented on a staff.
• Timbre: the individual tonal color of each musical instrument, such as bright and brilliant (brass instruments) or mellow and dark (wooden instruments).
• Tempo: the relative speed at which a musical piece is played, which can be indicated at the beginning of the piece or left to the performer's consideration.
• Dynamics: the loudness or softness of the music, which can change gradually or suddenly.
• Form: the structural outline of a piece or song, which can include sections like AB or Verse Chorus.
• Texture: the way multiple voices (or instruments) interact in a composition, which can also be described as a musical hierarchy.

Indigenous Dance

• Appreciating quality dance involves understanding and beliefs about dance education informed by current theory and practice.
• The learning lens highlights key understandings about learning that inform quality dance practice, including:
  • Learning is an active, embodied, and social process of constructing meaning.
  • Learning is recursive and shaped by the dynamic interaction of prior knowledge and new experiences.

Dance Appreciation

• Dance Appreciation is an exploration of how to understand and think about dance in various contexts.
• It involves understanding the social, cultural, aesthetic, and kinetic aspects of various forms of dance, including traditional, modern, indigenous, folk, and ancient dance.