Composing to a brief: creative starting points
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Why this why now
This unit introduces composing in response to a brief. It builds on prior experience of generating and developing musical ideas, with pupils focusing on musical starting points, genre conventions and development of initial ideas to establish a foundation for their composition, before extending and refining it in a subsequent unit.
Prior knowledge requirements
- Pupils can compose short musical ideas such as melodies, riffs or chord sequences.
- Pupils understand basic harmony and tonality.
- Pupils can structure music using repetition and contrast.
- Pupils understand stylistic conventions from prior genre-based units (e.g. pop, film, blues).
- Pupils can develop ideas using simple compositional techniques (e.g. sequence, repetition).
- Pupils can describe and evaluate music using appropriate musical vocabulary.
- Pupils have experience responding to compositional briefs in guided contexts.
Why this why now
This unit introduces composing in response to a brief. It builds on prior experience of generating and developing musical ideas, with pupils focusing on musical starting points, genre conventions and development of initial ideas to establish a foundation for their composition, before extending and refining it in a subsequent unit.
Prior knowledge requirements
- Pupils can compose short musical ideas such as melodies, riffs or chord sequences.
- Pupils understand basic harmony and tonality.
- Pupils can structure music using repetition and contrast.
- Pupils understand stylistic conventions from prior genre-based units (e.g. pop, film, blues).
- Pupils can develop ideas using simple compositional techniques (e.g. sequence, repetition).
- Pupils can describe and evaluate music using appropriate musical vocabulary.
- Pupils have experience responding to compositional briefs in guided contexts.
Composing to a brief: creative starting points
This unit introduces composing to a brief and explores how to generate effective musical starting points. Pupils consider ideas such as melodies, riffs, chord sequences and bass lines, alongside stylistic conventions, before applying these approaches to begin developing their own composition.
5 lessons in unit
slide decks, worksheet PDFs, quizzes and lesson overviews. You can select individual lessons from the Composing to a brief: creative starting points unit and download the resources you need, or download the entire unit now. See every unit listed in our AQA secondary music curriculum and discover more of our teaching resources for AQA secondary music programmes.