Music Composition, Intermediate

This 9 page PDF file will help you guide your intermediate students through a composition project. Note that this is designed for piano students, however, it may be used in a classroom setting for students who are familiar with a few major key signatures, and the concepts of major scales and major and minor triads. If you have middle or high school students who aren't that familiar with these concepts, this is a great resource for you to begin teaching them these skills.

Students are guided through a process of picking a chord progression from a list of four choices, and are asked to pick a major key signature that they are comfortable with. They are then guided through all of the triads within a major scale, and the Roman numerals associated with those triads. From the chord progression that the students picked, they begin writing a left hand (bass clef) pattern, followed by a melody using chord tones only.

For the next step, students are introduced to two non-chord tones (passing and neighbor tones) and are asked to revisit their melody, incorporating some of these non-chord tones as well. Their total compositional project will be 16 measures long.

If you are a studio piano teacher, you can spread this assignment out over 1-4 lessons, using a portion of each lesson time to complete different steps. Classroom teachers can also use this with their students, with a performance with any pitched instrument (xylophone, handbells, boomwhackers, etc.). Even if you aren't familiar with composition yourself, this PDF guide will help you guide your students through the process. The end result will be a composition that they will be proud of!

The digital PDF can be used for online lessons as well, shared over zoom and/or annotated with a PDF annotation program. Studio license allows you to print and distribute to all of your students.