Deliberate trial and reflection

You take stimuli from the areas of inquiry and experiment: trying out ideas through creating (composing, arranging, improvising) and performing.

• The internal assessment is a report evidencing research and experimentation through creating and performing tasks.
• Experimentation means deliberate trial: change one element, notice the effect, reflect.
• Keep evidence of the process, not only the finished product.

Building chords (triads)

A triad is three notes stacked in thirds: root, third and fifth.

• A major triad (C, E, G) sounds bright; a minor triad (A, C, E) sounds darker.
• Chords are numbered by scale degree with Roman numerals: I (tonic), IV (subdominant) and V (dominant) are the primary chords.
• In C major: I is C, IV is F, V is G, and vi is A minor.

Name that cadence

Cadences — musical punctuation

A cadence is a two-chord progression that ends a phrase, like punctuation:

• Perfect cadence: V to I — sounds finished (a full stop).
• Plagal cadence: IV to I — the Amen cadence, gently conclusive.
• Imperfect cadence: any chord to V — sounds unfinished (a comma).
• Interrupted cadence: V to vi — a surprise, where you expect I but get vi.

Research, create or perform?

Tap an experimenting task, then the role it mostly belongs to.

Keys, modulation and chromaticism

• Tonality is the key system: major (bright) or minor (dark), or modal or atonal.
• Modulation is changing key within a piece for contrast or direction (often moving to the dominant key).
• Diatonic notes belong to the key; chromatic notes come from outside it and add colour or tension.

Name that form

Structure — how sections are ordered

• Binary (AB), ternary (ABA), rondo (ABACA).
• Theme and variations — a theme returns transformed.
• Strophic (same music each verse) versus through-composed (new music throughout).
• 12-bar blues — a repeating twelve-bar chord pattern built on I, IV and V.
• Verse–chorus — the backbone of most pop songs.

Concrete experiments to evidence

• Take a motif and vary it (invert, augment, change its rhythm).
• Reharmonise a melody with different chords and cadences.
• Change the texture (turn a solo tune into a polyphonic round).
• Change metre or feel (straight to swung; duple to compound).
• Layer an ostinato or loop and build over it.

Document what you changed and how it sounded — that is the evidence assessors want.

Blues chords

Match the cadence to its chords

Tap a description on the left, then its matching term on the right.

Experimenting within an idiom

Experimenting often means improvising within a style’s rules — soloing over a 12-bar blues using the blues scale, or elaborating a raga in an alap.

Learn the idiom first (its scales, typical phrases and feel), then experiment within it and against it.

Predict the effect

Evidencing the process

• Show before and after: state your idea, what you tried, what happened, and what you changed next.
• Use correct terms (cadence, modulation, ostinato, texture).
• Connect experiments to the stimulus and the area of inquiry.
• Reflection matters as much as the result.

The big ideas to know

You have covered Experimenting with music. Press Finish to see your score.