Music

The Music Department at Harborne Academy is exciting and vibrant aspect of school life that has a priority to give every student the opportunity to experience music in a way that gives them the skills to flourish in their musical endeavours. 

We offer a wide range of musical activities for every student that caters for all ability levels, musical backgrounds, and interests. In addition to classroom music, there are numerous extra-curricular ensembles; Choir, Garageband Sessions, Ukulele Clubs.  
Our music department works in collaboration with the Services for Education Music Service and offers a range of instrumental lessons including drums, violin, piano and guitar. 

Our music curriculum at Harborne Academy aims to engage and inspire students to develop a love of music. Developing a range of skills from transferable skills including creativity and team work to music specific skills in line with the national curriculum such as performance, compositional and appraisal-based skills. Learners will have the opportunity to develop all of these skills through the use of our school’s range instruments (including keyboards, percussion, guitars, ukuleles and more)  and  iMac suite with music software at an industry standard for them to use. 

Year 7 – Students study topics that introduce fundamental skills that enable them to performance and compose pieces of music. The contexts of their units of work will differ between units that are focused on a specific instrument such as Keyboard Skills, Vocal Skills and Ukulele Skills or a specific genre of music such as Reggae. Students will also be introduced to musical elements which not only gives them the vocabulary that helps them evaluate and appraise music, it can also be used to develop their own performances and compositions throughout the first year. 

Year 8 – Students will build upon their knowledge from year 7 in order to compose and perform more complex pieces with improved accuracy, fluency, and expression. Some areas of study will vary in cultural contexts like the origins like Blues Music and the influence of Minimalism in modern music. Students develop their knowledge of the elements of music in order to evaluate their own musical works.  

Year 9 – Students will be expected to take a more autonomous approach in their last year of KS3. Much importance is placed upon the students’ creativity in which they will be expected to generate musical ideas using a wider range of musical equipment. Also, exploring texts in much more depth will allow students a deeper insight into contextual information. Students will start to prepare for GCSE exam style questioning through appraisals of music in Dance Music, assessed performances in Music for the Stage and Screen and coursework style compositional tasks in Video Game Music. 

Students continue their musical studies through the OCR GCSE Music qualification. This course is designed to inspire and engage students by exploring a wide range of music from different genres, styles, and eras. Coursework & exams are divided up into three main components: Performance & Composition (coursework) and Listening & Appraisal (Exam). Students will develop their performance skills by playing instruments or singing of their choices, being graded on a solo and ensemble performance. Students also create their own compositions using various techniques based on a style of music of their choices and a given style & context from OCR. The written exam will be based around their knowledge of music theory and how it applies to different musical contexts, examples of which include Rhythms of The World, Conventions of Pop Music, Concerto Through Time and Film Music.  This course not only enhances musical talents but also fosters creativity, critical thinking, and a deeper appreciation for the art of music. 

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Reading List

• Music Reading List