What is music? What is composition? What is a ‘new direction’ in music? Who is John Cage?
These are the topics I'll cover in this resource on John Cage's Three Dances for two prepared pianos, one of...
There are many advantages to exploring graphic notation in the classroom:
It's a fact that most of our young students will only have a limited experience of working with and understanding standard...
The short answer is that it gives a lot of bang for your buck: you can explore many musical concepts through a unit on variations in a relatively short space of time. These include meaty compositional...
Jane Werry Secondary education
Following an earlier resource on gaming music (AQA AoS2: Computer gaming music, Music Teacher, November 2018), here I'm going to consider ways of teaching computer game music using composition. This...
James Manwaring Secondary education
Christmas-themed Music Teacher resources have become something of an annual tradition, much like advent calendars or leaving out mince pies for Santa. In previous years, there have been some...
Hanh Doan Secondary education
It’s that time of year again. The end of a really long term, one often filled with the need for cover work or room changes as concert rehearsals and mock exams take place. But how can you keep classes...
Anna Gower Secondary education
In a number of schools, music teachers will need cover in order to meet the demands of the festive season. When cover is required, a teacher from another department will inevitably end up in your room...
James Manwaring Secondary education
From time to time, our rehearsals can have a little too much of the ‘harrowing’, or even of the ‘hearse’ to them. This resource is about revitalising our approach within a school context. It looks at...
Jonathan James Secondary education
The elements of music. DR P SMITH or MAD T SHIRT; posters on the walls of your classroom; a handy checklist for writing a model answer to a GCSE question; or a guide to development in an A level...
Anna Gower Secondary education
In this resource, I will consider what ‘wider listening’ means, and how we can approach it in our teaching.
There are some barriers that can easily be broken down, and some misconceptions that can...
In the first part of this resource (Music Teacher, August 2018) we looked at music by three of the five composers named by AQA in Area of Study 3: Music for Media – Bernard Herrmann, Hans Zimmer and...
Simon Rushby Secondary education
In the first part to this two-part resource (Music Teacher, July 2018), we tried to pin definitions on what it means to be musically creative, finding that the more you try to corner the concept, the...
Jonathan James Secondary education