Teacher orientation
This week asks: How does harmony create large-scale direction across more than one cadence? The three meetings move from shared experience to explicit theory and then transfer. Require students to predict before measuring or labeling; use performance and explanation together as evidence.
Every notated sonority is a new harmony; functional models prescribe one chord per category; sequence is random repetition.
Three-meeting sequence
Harmonic rhythm
Analyze harmonic rhythm
Compare the same chord loop changing once per bar and twice per beat.
Separate surface rhythm from harmonic rhythm; identify prolongation and structural changes.
Students reduce a textured excerpt to a harmonic timeline and explain disputed change points.
Where does harmony actually change in measure 3?
Create two harmonic-rhythm versions of one phrase.
T–PD–D–T
Recognize common phrase models
Map a phrase as departure, intensification, dominant arrival, and return.
Use the phrase model as a flexible hearing tool, not a mandatory formula; connect cadence strength to form.
Teams reorder chord cards into multiple functional phrases and perform each consequence.
Which function is missing from the example, and what is the effect?
Analyze two phrase models.
Sequence and expansion
Identify sequential harmonic patterns
Trace a descending-fifths pattern by roots.
Teach sequential model/copy, circle progressions, and expansion through repetition. Briefly introduce applied dominant sound.
Students extend an eight-measure phrase to sixteen using one controlled sequence.
Mark model and first copy in your sequence.
Polish and annotate the progression composition.
Student synthesis task
Claim–evidence–application: Students submit one notated or analytical artifact from the week, a 150–250 word explanation using at least four vocabulary terms, and a brief performance, recording, or demonstration. The explanation must identify a decision, cite musical evidence, and connect the idea to unfamiliar material.
Assessment and answer guidance
| Prompt | Value |
|---|---|
| 1. What is harmonic rhythm? | 2 points |
| 2. What does T–PD–D–T summarize? | 3 points |
| 3. How is harmonic sequence recognized? | 3 points |
| 4. Apply the week’s central idea to a new four-to-eight-measure example and explain the reasoning. | 7 points |
Teacher answer guidance
1. The rate and pattern of structural chord changes.
2. A common functional phrase trajectory from stability through departure and tension to return.
3. A chord/voice-leading pattern repeats at successive pitch levels.
4. Award 2 points for accurate identification or construction, 2 for correct notation/terminology, 2 for evidence tied to the example, and 1 for a clear conclusion. Accept alternate solutions when the musical reasoning is defensible.
Access, differentiation, and extension
Support without lowering the target
Write bass roots and function on a separate timeline. Preteach vocabulary, model one complete think-aloud, reduce the number of simultaneous variables, and allow a second attempt after feedback.
Extension
Analyze a sequential passage with secondary dominants.
Evidence to retain
Keep the exit tickets, synthesis artifact, and scored application prompt. Together they show factual fluency, transfer, and the student’s ability to explain music—not only select an answer.