MUSC1602: Materials and Structures of Music 1

I found that there were a lot of assesments in this course compared to some of my others. Portfolio of Harmony & Composition Exercises: In-class test during lecture (2 worth 15% each), Written Composition Assesment (20%).

Basic knowledge of music theory, Recommended (but not needed) to have completed AMEB Musicianship grades (possibly grade 5 level?).

As someone who didn’t really have a lot of music theory or knowledge of piano chords going into this course I struggled at times and found the beginning of the course a bit difficult. The classes were also a little bit boring sometimes, which didn’t help. However, towards the end of the semester, I realized how much I had learnt and improved in analyzing music and chords.

The course is loosely split into three different parts: the harmony lecture, tute and aural studio.

The harmony lecture went for an hour a week and was unrecorded (which was annoying as I wasn’t able to listen to parts that I hadn’t understood during the lectures). During the lectures, we covered topics such as triads/chords, inversions, dominant 7ths, non-harmonic tones, & cadences. The lecturer worked on a whiteboard and moved fairly fast each week which would have been difficult to catch up if you had missed a class. He didn’t really make sure everybody understood a concept before moving on (which was difficult as everybody had a different level of theory knowledge going into the course). He picked on people to answer questions about chords which was terrifying as I wasn’t very confident. I found the two tests during the lectures to be fairly difficult, especially with the 50 minutes time limit. However, we did have some help/guidance with the composition assessment.

The harmony tute (which was the stream for people who weren’t at a high level of theory) mainly went over content that was covered in the lectures. It was a small class (around 10 people) and Brad was really helpful in trying to make sure we all understood the concepts and we were able to ask heaps of questions. The harmony tests and what we needed to study for them were both explained very well and were some of my best marks.
The aural studio was with everyone in the course (around 70 people) and began to teach us basic singing. We began just learning simple warm ups and then progressed to four-part harmony pieces in smaller groups. This felt weird at first because I’d never sung before, however was really fun, learning how to sing in four-part harmony especially with our last song ‘Chasing Cars’.

1hr Lecture, 1hr Studio, 1hr Tute per week.

4/5 (but would definitely depend on your prior knowledge of music theory)

No

John Peterson: Lecturer, Brad Taylor-Newling: Harmony Tutor, David Taylor: Aural Studio Tutor

Some examples of music to analyze as well as definitions of non-harmonic tones. We also had to buy a program called Auralia for aural training. I didn’t find there was a lot of examples of excerpts to practise to prepare for the tests in the lectures: the lecturer expected that we could find pieces to use online.

2.5/5

The musician’s guide to theory and analysis. It was really expensive so I brought it secondhand, however I think it can be used for all four M&S courses. The textbook did really help explain some of the more difficult concepts.

2018, 1