11–12Music Life Skills 11–12 Syllabus (2025)

Style, including the characteristic manner in which music is composed, performed or understood

Genre, including categorisations of music based on formal and cultural criteria

Conventions, including established practices, norms and rules that govern the composition, performance and interpretation of music within specific genres, cultures or historical periods

How long a note lasts (note value), including long and short sounds

The sound that keeps time in music (beat)

Steady (regular) beats and changing (irregular) beats

The pattern of sounds and silences in a piece of music (rhythm), including repeated patterns (ostinato), emphasis on beats 2 and 4 (backbeat), playing notes off the main beat (syncopation), lively and uneven beats (swing)

Groupings of the beat in a piece of music (metre), including simple and compound time signatures

The speed of the music (tempo), including changes in speed (gradations), indications of speed (metronome markings), and expressive indications

Making the note sound higher or lower (pitch)

A sequence of notes in a piece of music (melody), including a repeated idea or pattern that moves up or down in pitch (sequence), imitation, and singing many notes on just one syllable of a word (melisma)

The notes that a piece of music is based on (tonality), including major and minor keys

Two or more notes played together (chords), including progressions

The way chords and notes work together (harmony), including pleasant and stable (consonant) harmonies, tense harmonies, harsh or clashing (dissonant) harmonies, changes in key (modulation), the change from dissonant to consonant (resolution)

A set of notes arranged in order that create a certain sound or mood (scales and modes), including a pattern of notes that gives music a happy, bright or cheerful sound (major), a pattern of notes that gives music a sad or emotional sound (minor), a scale made of 5 notes (pentatonic scale)

How many notes or sounds are played together at the same time (density), which could be described as thick or thin

Layers of sound

Ways layers of sound are changed or added to (textural devices), including a melody repeated in quick succession by different voices or instruments (canon), 2 or more instruments or voices playing the same melody at the same time (doubling), a different second melody that is played or sung along with the main melody (countermelody), and repeating a section of music (looping)

The people or instruments that make music (performing media and/or sound sources), including voices, instruments, electronic sounds and acoustic sounds

The way instruments or voices make sounds (sound production methods), including blowing, plucking, scraping, strumming and shaking

The unique sound or tone that makes an instrument or voice sound different from others (timbral descriptions), including nasal and metallic

Instrument-specific techniques

Electronic and digital manipulation of sounds

Digital techniques, including looping, sampling, delay, echo, pitch-shifting and digital reverb

Loud (forte) or soft (piano)

Becoming louder (crescendo) or softer (diminuendo)

How a note is played or sung (articulation), including short bursts of sound with space between each note (staccato), or smooth connected sounds with no breaks between notes (legato)

A wobble or variation in pitch (vibrato)

Softening or dampening the sound of a musical instrument (mute)

Emphasising a particular note or sound (accent)

The overall structure of a piece of music (macrostructure), including verse–chorus, 2 different sections (binary), and 3 sections with the first and last section very similar (ternary)

The small details of a piece of music (microstructure), including repeated patterns of notes or chords (riffs), short musical ideas or phrases repeated in the music (motifs), melodies or musical ideas the piece is built around (theme), and a short piece of music that represents a person, place, idea or feeling in a story (leitmotif)

A musical conversation where one part (the call) is answered by another part (the response)