Music
The CHS Music program provides students the opportunity to create, perform, and respond to music through a variety of experiences and activities. Music offers unique learning opportunities to explore individual creativity, artistic expression, and a more in-depth understanding of past and present cultures in our diverse world community.
Courses
Jazz Ensemble
Units
- Improvisation
- Jazz Styles and Techniques
- Musical Devices and Chord Progressions
- Traditional Jazz Instruments-Melody, Harmony, and Bass Line
- Advanced Jazz Repertoire
Improvisation
- Students select and perform a composition within a small ensemble setting and develop and implement a rehearsal plan to refine the chosen composition.
- Students explore improvisation through varying phrases of previously existing melodic content.
- Students synthesize improvisation strategies to improvise a section of music in the chosen composition.
Jazz Styles and Techniques
- Students anchor their study of performance techniques by engaging in analysis of famous pieces by famous performers.
- Students study conventions in harmony in jazz pieces.
- Students develop soloing techniques, notating ideas for solos, and developing those ideas by applying new techniques.
- Students expand improvisation to include chromatic variations of the melody.
Musical Devices and Chord Progressions
Traditional Jazz Instruments-Melody, Harmony, and Bass Line
Advanced Jazz Repertoire
Percussion
Units
- Performance Skills
- Percussion Ensemble I
- Ensemble Expression
- Concert Performance
- Percussion Ensemble II
- Concert Performance (B)
- Final Concert
Performance Skills
- Students recognize and identify musical symbols of pitch and rhythm and apply them to a musical context.
- Students demonstrate proficiency moving through a sequence of increasing rhythmic activity and a range/tonality-based pitch sequencing.
- Students differentiate between duple and triple meters as well as discriminate between the possible rhythmic divisions of those meters.
- Students apply Conversational Solfege, counting numbers, and contemporary rhythmic interpretation techniques to musical examples for the purposes of decoding accurate and musical performance practices.
- Students classify key signatures and tonalities as major, minor, or modal using aural and visual identification.
- Students create and execute a plan of proper performance practices including posture, arm/wrist control, and rehearsal etiquette through trial and error strategies and ongoing group discussion.
Percussion Ensemble I
- Students differentiate performance skills on a larger array of percussion instruments, often utilizing multiple diverse instruments at the same time.
- Students demonstrate proper technique for a characteristic tone quality on a full range of concert percussion: proper striking technique, stick height, dampening, and grip.
Ensemble Expression
- Students demonstrate the performance of dynamic levels, and perform and understand the use of ritardando, accelerando, and A Tempo.
- Students develop an understanding of musical phrases and a variety of ways to perform a phrase.
- Students make artistic choices about phrasing using a consideration of the composer's intent and an understanding of the larger context.
- Students demonstrate an increased ability to shape musical lines with dynamics and tempo and contribute personal musical decisions about phrasing.
Concert Performance
- Students identify and perform exercises and repertoire selected from the keys of C, F, Bb, Eb, Ab, and Db major as well as their respective relative minor keys. Additionally, students begin studies using the F Chromatic Scale.
- Students analyze and perform at sight unidentified excerpts of music in these keys.
- Students perform independently, in small groups, and as full ensemble rhythms using traditional counting systems, neutral syllables, body movement, and their instruments.
- Through a variety of activities, students echo and write dictated melodic and rhythmic patterns onto the musical staff using appropriate notation. Melodic patterns include diatonic major and minor patterns and rhythmic dictations include all rhythms and subdivisions from the current repertoire.
Percussion Ensemble II
- Students organize and administer student-run rehearsals during which they apply productive rehearsal skills, mark and prepare music appropriately, and develop an appropriate set-up.
- Students demonstrate proper technique for a characteristic tone quality on a full range of concert percussion: proper striking technique, stick height, dampening, and grip.
Concert Performance (B)
- Students identify and perform the time and tonality of their repertoire.
- Students use visual identification and aural discernment not only to recognize familiar symbols and patterns but also to infer musical concepts.
- Students infer the form of a piece based upon aural identifications, thematic visual aides, and compositional exercises.
- Students identify traditional forms such as Sonata, Theme and Variations, March, Rondo.
- Students classify and organize music based on the historical period and cultural impact.
- Students differentiate between articulations of slurs, ties, accents, marcato, staccato, legato, and tenuto.
- Students identify expressive terms used to describe music (adagio grazioso, molto legato) and other markings including dynamics and changes of tempi.
- Students assess performances and rehearsals using an evaluative critique based upon elements of music and ensemble logistics.
Final Concert
- Students present one piece of music of personal significance based on the musical elements that create the piece - rhythm/meter, melody, tonality/harmony, texture, form, general aesthetics of the piece, and any significant cultural influences that surround the piece.
- Students include in the presentation a recording of the piece, a visual presentation of significant articles, and a lecture.
AP Music Theory
Units
Elements of Music
- Students Identify by sight and aurally and perform all major and minor ascending and descending intervals using solfege and various rhythms in simple and compound meters using number counting.
- Students sing in diatonic major and minor in treble and bass clefs using solfege syllables.
- Students dictate diatonic major and minor tonalities and compound and simple meter melodies in treble and bass clef.
- Students identify by sight and aurally and perform major, minor, and pentatonic scales.
- Students identify by sight and aurally and compose triads and seventh chords in all inversions.
Diatonic Harmony
- Students identify and compose note to note counterpoints and identify and compose various melodic embellishments.
- Students identify and compose chorale style soprano and bass lines and identify aurally basic phrase structure including cadences in SATB style.
- Students identify predominant, dominant, and tonic tonalities.
- Students identify 64 different chords and identify and compose voice leading chords. Students identify and compose SATB style part writing using figured bass and Roman numerals.
Chromatic Harmony and Form
Composition
Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band
Units
Performance and Musicianship Skills
- Students demonstrate music reading skills and recognize how compositional devices are employed and how structural aspects of works may inform prepared and improvised performances.
- Students infer the form of a piece based upon aural identifications, thematic visual aides, and compositional exercises.
- Students arrange music into pre-set forms and identify traditional forms such as Sonata, Theme and Variations, March, Rondo.
- Students classify and organize music from the eras of Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and 20th Century music based on the historical period and cultural impact.
- Students differentiate through visual and aural identification as well as performance between articulations of slurs, ties, accents, marcato, staccato, legato, and tenuto, or combinations thereof.
- Students identify expressive terms used to describe music as needed in their repertoire.
- Students assess performances and rehearsals using an evaluative critique based upon elements of music and ensemble logistics.
Repertoire Concert Performance
- Students identify and perform the time and tonality of their repertoire.
- Students use visual identification and aural discernment not only to recognize familiar symbols and patterns but also to infer musical concepts.
- Students evaluate and refine draft arrangements, sections, short compositions, and improvisations.
- Students develop and apply criteria to select a varied repertoire to study and perform based on an understanding of theoretical and structural characteristics and expressive challenges in the music, the technical skill of the individual or ensemble, and the purpose and context of the performance.
- Students demonstrate how understanding the style, genre, and context of a varied repertoire of music influences prepared and improvised performances as well as performers’ technical skills to connect with the audience.
- Students develop and apply appropriate rehearsal strategies to address individual and ensemble challenges in a varied repertoire of music, and evaluate their success.
National Holiday Celebrations
- Students demonstrate mastery of the technical demands and an understanding of expressive qualities of the music in prepared and improvised performances of a varied repertoire representing diverse cultures, styles, genres, and historical periods.
- Students support interpretations of the expressive intent and meaning of musical works citing as evidence the treatment of the elements of music, contexts, the setting of the text, and varied researched sources.
Choir
Units
Standard Based Learning
- Students sing with expression and technical accuracy a large and varied repertoire of vocal literature.
- Students sing music written in four parts with and without accompaniment while demonstrating well-developed ensemble skills.
- Students improvise stylistically appropriate harmonizing parts and rhythmic and melodic variations in major and minor keys over given chord progressions.
- Students demonstrate the ability to read an instrumental or vocal score of up to four staves by describing how the elements of music are used.
- Students analyze aural examples of a varied repertoire of music, representing diverse genres and cultures by describing the uses of elements of music and expressive devices.
- Students make informed, critical evaluations of the quality and effectiveness of performances.
Enhancement of Vocal Skills
Choral Repertoire for Concerts and Cabaret
- Using all choral concert literature, students identify all dynamic markings and evaluate the text, focusing on how to pronounce consonants with clarity.
- Students apply this knowledge of dynamics and diction through their performance of each piece.
- Students analyze the tempo, meter, and key signatures of choral concert literature.
- Students analyze and identify various key signatures, meters, rhythms, and pitches of choral concert literature.
- Students apply this knowledge through performing sight reading examples. Using all choral literature from the winter concert, students determine the style and time period of each piece through analysis and investigation from various musical sources.
Departments
English
Mathematics
_edited.png)
Science
Social Studies
World Language
Business
Art
Technology Education
Music
Physical Education
Health
Family & Consumer Sciences
