Serial Music-Year 9 (3 Lessons on Serialism)

This contains a Power Point and accompanying worksheets to teach year 9 about serial music.

It covers constructing a note row from the 12 semitones and crating a Prime Row. This is then put to the rhythm of the tune Happy Birthday. Pupils then learn about using this row in retrograde form.

The worksheets help the pupils construct their own versions of Happy Birthday using the Prime rows that they have created. Pupils then create two note chords using the retrograde row and put this with their prime row version of Happy Birthday. This gives pupils a complete piece to play that uses verticalisation techniques in a simple way.

This work can then be developed so that chords with 3 or 4 notes are created with the retrograde row or the melody and chords could be made up just using a single note row.