Styles Booklet (Rock N Roll, Reggae, Ballads in 6/8)

This booklet covers 3 styles of music, including Rock N’ Roll, Reggae and Ballads in 6/8. This booklet is a keyboard based project, and focuses on How chords and bassline fit together and sound different with the features of each style, along with an introduction to the difference between Legato and Staccato.

This project would take around 10-12 1 hour lessons to complete, and would be ideal for year 8.

The first thing this booklet contains, is some starter pages which are flexible for retrieval practice and any regular questions you usually set at the beginning of lessons e.g. Listening.

Then the booklet explores Rock N’ Roll and looks at the 12 bar blues structure, walking bass and students learn to play Hound Dog by Elvis.

Then, students explore some of the key features of Reggae and learn to play Three Little Birds chords and bassline. This mainly focuses on the Chords being syncopated and played staccato, and the bassline being melodic.

The final style introduces different time signatures in the form of Ballads in 6/8. Students also explore Broken Chords and how to play Legato, through playing Alicia Keys - Fallin’.

Finally, the assessment is a composition/arrangement for the students to complete. Students get 4 chords (Chords, I, IV, V and vi in a key). and are required to use the key features of the style to create a composition in the style of Reggae, Ballads or Rock N Roll. Students would need to plan and make a decision on which chords to use. Their understanding and ability to apply that to their own composition is tested here.