Skip to content

A NSW Government website

Welcome to the NSW Curriculum website

NSW Curriculum
NSW Education Standards Authority

11–12Music 1 11–12 Syllabus (2025)

Implementation from 2027
Expand for detailed implementation advice

Content

Year 11

Contexts of music

Students perform, compose, listen, analyse and respond to music to develop their understanding of how music is organised, interpreted and communicated across a range of social, historical and cultural contexts. Through the study of selected repertoire students develop aural skills and their understanding of Music language including identifying stylistic features and recognising rhythmic, melodic and harmonic structures. Students investigate how Compositional language and expressive devices convey stylistic identity and meaning across musical traditions, applying this understanding to their own performance, analysis and creative work.

Performing
  • Perform using techniques appropriate to the style and genre

  • Improvise with pitch sets and rhythmic patterns from a range of traditions

  • Adjust performance approaches in response to feedback

Listening, analysing and responding
  • Investigate the use of Music language in repertoire from diverse traditions

  • Identify rhythmic, melodic, structural, textural and expressive compositional devices

  • Explore how performance conventions reflect distinctive contexts

  • Analyse how Music context influences interpretation

  • Evaluate the role of technologies in the development of musical styles

  • Explore lead sheets, tablature, drum notation and staff notation

  • Use aural skills to recognise metre, tempo and rhythmic patterns

  • Use aural skills to recognise pentatonic, major, minor, Aeolian mode tonality, and harmonic progressions including chords I/i (tonic), IV/iv (subdominant), V (dominant) and vi/VI (submediant)

Creating and composing
  • Use Compositional language to develop existing musical motifs and themes

  • Explore rhythmic, melodic and harmonic Compositional language to create new musical ideas

  • Document musical ideas as part of the creative process

Related files