Instrumental Music: Grade 8

Music Performance

Creating Music

Music Literacy

Critical Response to Music

History and Culture

Making Connections

The student will sing and perform on instruments a variety of music, alone and with others.

The student will improvise, compose, and arrange music within specified guidelines.

The student will read and notate music.

The student will listen to, describe, analyze, and evaluate music and music performances.

The student will examine and perform music from a variety of cultures and stylistic periods.

The student will make connections between music and other arts disciplines, other content areas, and the world.

Singing

Performing

Improvising

Composing and Arranging

Read and notate whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, and dotted notes and corresponding rests in 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, 3/8, and alla breve time signatures.

Identify half and whole steps within given keys and sight-read music at a level of 1 or 2 on a scale from 1 to 6.

Identify, notate, and interpret symbols and terms of musical expression referring to dynamics, tempo, and articulation.

Analyzing

Evaluating

Compare characteristics and uses of music from different cultures and historical periods.

Compare characteristics and uses of music representing different styles and genres.

Compare common music terms to those found in other arts disciplines (for example, tone, rhythm, volume, form).

Compare common music terms to those found in non-arts disciplines (for example, genre, program, dynamics, pitch).

Identify musicians from various historical periods, music settings, and cultures and describe their careers and skills.

Discuss the costs and labor involved in artistic performances and productions.

Examine music's impact on everyday life.

Sing with technical accuracy and good breath control, alone or in small and large ensembles.

Sing with expression and stylistic accuracy.

Sing with well-developed ensemble skills.

Perform on an instrument while maintaining good posture and playing position and demonstrating good breath support or good bow or stick control.

Play familiar music on an instrument by ear.

Play instruments expressively with appropriate dynamics, phrasing, and interpretation.

Demonstrate the characteristic tone quality of the particular instrument while playing with accurate notes, rhythms, dynamics, articulations, and intonation and maintaining a steady tempo.

Perform, alone and in groups, music written in two or more parts, balancing dynamics, blending timbres, and using well-developed ensemble skills in response to the cues of a conductor.

Perform with stylistic accuracy a variety of music representing diverse cultures, genres and styles.

Perform scales and music literature at a level of difficulty comparable to that prescribed by the third-year method book, or at a 3 on a scale from 1 to 6.

Improvise rhythmic and melodic phrases within a given meter and tonality.

Improvise simple harmonic accompaniments within a given meter and tonality.

Compose short pieces for his or her instrument.

Arrange short pieces for his or her instrument.

Use appropriate terminology to describe the musical form (for example, motive, canon, rondo, theme and variation, call and response) of a work that is presented aurally and visually.

Analyze the elements of music in compositions representing diverse genres and cultures.

Analyze music by identifying basic principles of meter, rhythm, form, tonality, intervals, and chords.

Develop and use criteria to evaluate the quality of the music performances of others.

Develop and use criteria to evaluate the quality of his or her own music performances.

Use appropriate terminology to explain his or her preferences in music based on a variety of genres, styles, and historical periods.