Tutoring Times:
Thursday 3:45-4:45 pm
Course Description
The AP Music Theory course resembles that of a college freshman year theory course. Significant critical, analytical and creative thinking skills are fostered in most parts of the course, especially when dealing with texture, harmonic progression, formal structuring and style. AP Examination questions emphasize the synthesis of musical knowledge into usable musical understanding, asking questions that require a high level of comparison and analysis.
In addition, this advanced theory course is designed for all student musicians, not exclusively students who will go on to major in music. Thus, the subject matter is much wider than required by the AP Music Theory Examination and the challenge is all the greater for it.
This course incorporates the analysis of music, including melody, rhythm, harmony, texture, form, timbre and expression with composition and to some extent, history and style. Musicianship skills such as dictation, audiation, sight-singing, playing the piano and using music technology are developed within the scope of the curriculum.
The student’s prior ability to read and write musical notation is highly recommended but not required. It is also highly recommended that the student have acquired some basic performance skills on an instrument or with the voice.
This course is a self motivated class and will require daily note taking and neat handwriting skills. Students are expected to take the AP Music Theory Exam in May in efforts of earning a score of 3 – 5, which will yield credit towards music theory college course offerings depending on the institution.
Goals
The ultimate goal of AP music theory is to develop the student’s ability to recognize, understand and describe the basic materials and processes of music that are heard or presented in a score. The achievement of this goal is expressed through oral skills, aural skills, writing skills and visual skills
Oral skills: Students are expected to sing independently, demonstrating accurate intonation and rhythm, using literature ranging in difficulty from moderate to difficult. This includes sight-singing major, minor, and chromatic melodies in simple and compound meters.
Aural skills: Students are expected to identify through listening: intervals, scales and keys, harmonic structure, metric organization, rhythmic patterns, texture, and form. These skills will be developed through dictation (both melodic and harmonic) as well as aural analysis of standard Western tonal repertoire.
Writing skills: Students are expected to master notational skills such as clef placement, proper use of key and time signatures, proper metric use of beaming, vertical alignment of chords, etc. These skills will progress to include more sophisticated and creative tasks: melodic harmonization, figured bass realization, and the realization of a Roman numeral progression.
Visual skills: Students are expected to identify and describe musical elements and their interaction from visual representation, including study of motivic treatment, examination of rhythmic and melodic interaction between individual voices of a composition, and harmonic analysis of functional tonal passages.
Students will develop and practice the following skills throughout the year-long course of study:
Aural Skills
.Tonal Harmony. You will be given a copy on loan from the library for home reference and classroom use. It is your responsibility to care for the book during the duration of this class and return it without any markings or damage. Damaged books will result in a fine.
Preparation and organization are essential for you to do well.
Classroom
We will use choir room 105.
FOOD AND DRINK (except water) IS NOT ALLOWED IN THE CLASSROOM AND WILL BE CONFISCATED WITHOUT WARNING.
Grading
50% Major grades: test, projects, reports
30% minor grades: written quizzes, aural quizzes, analysis, vocabulary
20% daily grades: note taking, participation, daily work, dictations and analysis
Late Work
Turn it in.
Semester and Final Grades
Your final class grade will be tabulated on a cumulative points system per semester. On any given day, your current grade is a result of what you’ve earned from the beginning of the semester up until that day. When second semester starts, the tabulation begins again from scratch.
Attendance Policy
Absences
Punctuality:
It is important to be in class on time. You are tardy when you are not in your seat when the bell rings. Any student who is tardy more than 30 minutes is absent for the period and must clear the absence with the attendance office the following day. Detention will be assigned for tardiness. In case of excessive tardiness, your parent(s) will be contacted and you will be referred to your Educational Advisor. Chronic tardiness may result in the loss of your class.
Ethics
To create a fair and positive learning environment, the Paschal Administration and Faculty require that students act with honesty at all times in their academic endeavors. To this end, consequences have been established for all cases of cheating. Cheating includes plagiarizing, copying another student’s work, using notes or other means of assistance on an assignment or test that are not permitted by the teacher, passing answers or information to other students about an assignment or test when such action has been prohibited by the teacher, and taking a copy of a test without teacher permission in order to use it for personal advantage or for distribution to other students. Consequences, depending upon the category of unethical behavior, will range from a zero recorded for the assignment, quiz, test or exam to suspension for 1-5 days to possible legal action. See the Guidelines for Student Behavior Handbook for the complete policy.
Respect
It is expected that you will follow the rules of the school handbook while present in this class. In order for this room to be a place for ideas, musical expression and learning we must all agree to respect each other, ourselves and property. We are fortunate to have an opportunity to study music and it is expected that we all make thoughtful choices in what we say and do. Failure to meet those expectations will result in the appropriate consequence.
Thursday 3:45-4:45 pm
Course Description
The AP Music Theory course resembles that of a college freshman year theory course. Significant critical, analytical and creative thinking skills are fostered in most parts of the course, especially when dealing with texture, harmonic progression, formal structuring and style. AP Examination questions emphasize the synthesis of musical knowledge into usable musical understanding, asking questions that require a high level of comparison and analysis.
In addition, this advanced theory course is designed for all student musicians, not exclusively students who will go on to major in music. Thus, the subject matter is much wider than required by the AP Music Theory Examination and the challenge is all the greater for it.
This course incorporates the analysis of music, including melody, rhythm, harmony, texture, form, timbre and expression with composition and to some extent, history and style. Musicianship skills such as dictation, audiation, sight-singing, playing the piano and using music technology are developed within the scope of the curriculum.
The student’s prior ability to read and write musical notation is highly recommended but not required. It is also highly recommended that the student have acquired some basic performance skills on an instrument or with the voice.
This course is a self motivated class and will require daily note taking and neat handwriting skills. Students are expected to take the AP Music Theory Exam in May in efforts of earning a score of 3 – 5, which will yield credit towards music theory college course offerings depending on the institution.
Goals
The ultimate goal of AP music theory is to develop the student’s ability to recognize, understand and describe the basic materials and processes of music that are heard or presented in a score. The achievement of this goal is expressed through oral skills, aural skills, writing skills and visual skills
Oral skills: Students are expected to sing independently, demonstrating accurate intonation and rhythm, using literature ranging in difficulty from moderate to difficult. This includes sight-singing major, minor, and chromatic melodies in simple and compound meters.
Aural skills: Students are expected to identify through listening: intervals, scales and keys, harmonic structure, metric organization, rhythmic patterns, texture, and form. These skills will be developed through dictation (both melodic and harmonic) as well as aural analysis of standard Western tonal repertoire.
Writing skills: Students are expected to master notational skills such as clef placement, proper use of key and time signatures, proper metric use of beaming, vertical alignment of chords, etc. These skills will progress to include more sophisticated and creative tasks: melodic harmonization, figured bass realization, and the realization of a Roman numeral progression.
Visual skills: Students are expected to identify and describe musical elements and their interaction from visual representation, including study of motivic treatment, examination of rhythmic and melodic interaction between individual voices of a composition, and harmonic analysis of functional tonal passages.
Students will develop and practice the following skills throughout the year-long course of study:
Aural Skills
- Students will be able to sing various melodies in different tonalities and meters at sight.Students will be able to aurally identify various melodies in different tonalities and meters and notate them correctly on the staff.
- Students will be able to aurally identify standard harmonic progressions and notate the outer voices correctly while applying appropriate Roman numeral analysis and inversion symbols.
- Students will be able to aurally identify discrepancies between notation and aural cues.
- Students will be able to aurally identify intervals and scales, meter and rhythm, form, chord progressions, cadences, instrumentation, and texture.
- Students will be able to read a musical score, identifying and applying knowledge of the following: clefs, keys/tonality, pitches, metric organization and rhythmic devices, intervals & scales, chord structure and progression, non-harmonic tones, compositional devices, cadences, form, and texture.
- Students will be able to apply Roman numeral analysis with inversion symbols to scores from the common practice period as well as scores from Western popular music.
- Students will be able to harmonize a melody using traditional chord progressions.
- Students will be able to spell chords from a given figured bass as well as from roman numerals.
- Students will be able to realize a progression in four voices from both figured bass and Roman numerals.
- Students will be able to compose a bass line and write a harmonic progression with appropriate cadences for a given melody.
- Students will be able to sing various melodies in different tonalities and meters at sight.
- Students will be able to improvise appropriate melodies (sung and/or played on an instrument) above a given harmonic progression.
- Students will perform in groups as well as individually.
.Tonal Harmony. You will be given a copy on loan from the library for home reference and classroom use. It is your responsibility to care for the book during the duration of this class and return it without any markings or damage. Damaged books will result in a fine.
- 1.5” three ring binder. Most of our class materials will be distributed to you as handouts. Each of these handouts MUST be carefully organized in your own three ring binder. You should bring this to class with you every day.
- Blank notebook and staff paper. You may either print it out online from our class website or purchase it a music store.
- Sharpened pencils and erasers are required. The use of pen is prohibited!
Preparation and organization are essential for you to do well.
Classroom
We will use choir room 105.
FOOD AND DRINK (except water) IS NOT ALLOWED IN THE CLASSROOM AND WILL BE CONFISCATED WITHOUT WARNING.
Grading
50% Major grades: test, projects, reports
30% minor grades: written quizzes, aural quizzes, analysis, vocabulary
20% daily grades: note taking, participation, daily work, dictations and analysis
Late Work
Turn it in.
Semester and Final Grades
Your final class grade will be tabulated on a cumulative points system per semester. On any given day, your current grade is a result of what you’ve earned from the beginning of the semester up until that day. When second semester starts, the tabulation begins again from scratch.
Attendance Policy
Absences
- You must be physically present or you are defined as absent.
- It is the policy of the FWISD to encourage students’ regular attendance and participation in all classes. Student participation and personal interaction with teachers and with fellow classmates are recognized as integral parts of the students’ high school learning experience.
- Excessive excused absences may directly affect a student’s grade whether by missing class lectures and discussions or by failing to turn in homework and tests.
- When students lose a class, they lose credit and can become ineligible for athletics and/or for co-curricular activities.
- You must bring a note signed by your parent/guardian stating the reason for your absence to the attendance office upon your return to school.
- Unless you have cleared the absence by telephone or note from a parent through the attendance office, you will be marked truant. CLEARING AN ABSENCE IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR TARDINESS.
Punctuality:
It is important to be in class on time. You are tardy when you are not in your seat when the bell rings. Any student who is tardy more than 30 minutes is absent for the period and must clear the absence with the attendance office the following day. Detention will be assigned for tardiness. In case of excessive tardiness, your parent(s) will be contacted and you will be referred to your Educational Advisor. Chronic tardiness may result in the loss of your class.
Ethics
To create a fair and positive learning environment, the Paschal Administration and Faculty require that students act with honesty at all times in their academic endeavors. To this end, consequences have been established for all cases of cheating. Cheating includes plagiarizing, copying another student’s work, using notes or other means of assistance on an assignment or test that are not permitted by the teacher, passing answers or information to other students about an assignment or test when such action has been prohibited by the teacher, and taking a copy of a test without teacher permission in order to use it for personal advantage or for distribution to other students. Consequences, depending upon the category of unethical behavior, will range from a zero recorded for the assignment, quiz, test or exam to suspension for 1-5 days to possible legal action. See the Guidelines for Student Behavior Handbook for the complete policy.
Respect
It is expected that you will follow the rules of the school handbook while present in this class. In order for this room to be a place for ideas, musical expression and learning we must all agree to respect each other, ourselves and property. We are fortunate to have an opportunity to study music and it is expected that we all make thoughtful choices in what we say and do. Failure to meet those expectations will result in the appropriate consequence.
