A fantastic tool for GCSE and A Level students who are exploring creating harmonic progressions. This spreadsheet allows you to select your tonal centre, then it gives you the key, chords I-vii as well as secondary dominants and common modal interchange chords. Complete with instructions on how to use them within a sequence. These pages will also give you the key signatures and notes in the scale. There are tabs for Major, Minor and Modes, as well as the Chord Finder. the Chord Finder allow you to select the root note, then it gives you 40 chord types (ranging from major triad through to all the crazy extensions/alterations). It will give you the notes in the chord, as well as guidance on how to use them. This resource comes with 2 versions of the spreadsheet. One which uses images of the key signatures and scales, which I find most useful, but only works on Macs/PCs/Laptops. The other version is 100% text based, which will work on phones/tablets. This is a powerful tool, which can be useful for students to get to grips with the fundamentals of harmony, as well as explore the more advanced aspects of the harmonic language. The spreadsheet is locked for editing so you can’t accidentally overwrite the formulas. But the password is on the “Backstage” tab if you really want to adapt the resource.

This is a 5 week course in African drumming, Perfect for the shorter 1/2 terms after Christmas for year 8 or 9 (I wrote it with yr 8's in mind). In this file there are two variations, for higher and lower level of musical ability as well as some built in class routines, and a bank of progressive activities to resort to (using books and/or computers), should you feel that the class needs to take a break from the drums. Assessment can be done during the final masterpiece, I have not included assessment levels, as I am aware that many schools have very different systems. The SOW gets students composing, improvising and layering rhythms in a Ghanaian drumming style. It highlights many keywords and their meanings, keywords that are usually left for GCSE have been highlighted where possible. These include everything from tempo and structure through to polyrhythm, resultant rhythm and the differences between time signatures All necessary rhythms are written in notation, and given rhythm-words on the powerpoint. The scheme is repeated twice within the file, one which highlights higher ability keywords for high sets, and one which is slightly reduced for the lower sets. This is accessible through hyperlinks on slide 1. All lessons have a 'stop drumming' button which, when pressed, zaps you to the non-drumming activities. In my school, the final performance piece was ideal for showing off gifted and talented students who improvised solos and took on the role of master drummer, whilst less able students are encouraged to participate by just being part of a group. We used it in a year 8 assembly, then we were requested to use it again in assemblies for all other year groups and to parents in our recent spring concert. It was a massive success and 100% of the students said that they really enjoyed it. I thoroughly recommend having a djembe and a djembe strap for teaching African drums, it allows you to walk around the room and simultaneously demonstrate/ join in.

This 12 Lesson Garageband-based Pop Music Composition project for year 8-9 is designed to engage students with pop music from vast range of decades, looking at popular conventions and writing them into a song. The course is ideally suited to a whole term of work, however can be shortened by taking out some of the bookwork content. Slides are organised on a system of Hook, Line and Thinker (starter, main questions that are raised and answered during the lesson, and plenary activity). Being designed for a full term, the course contains both a formative and summative assessment point. In order to listen to a whole class worth of music, it would easily stretch over two lessons. Included in the bundle is a SOW document, very self explanatory PPT, 2 written tests (with a revision sheet), a homework summary with copy-and-paste-able texts to set up Show My Homework. There are also guidance sheets to give extra support for some of the more complex tasks.