Self-directed Study Sheet 37

Liam singing and playing the omnichord

  1. Observation: Think about what you see and hear in the video.
  2. Interpretation: What can you reasonably infer about the person's musical engagement?
  3. Formative assessment: Suggest a Sounds of Intent Level, Domain & Element
  4. Summative assessment: Suggest a summative assessment (Domain, Level, E•A•X)

Liam sings the first part of Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen, accompanying himself with the correct chords (and at the same pitch as the original song). The intonation of his singing is variable, and the words largely come across as a stream of approximations to the vowel sounds of the original. It is evident that Liam has internalised the melody and chords of the opening part of Don’t Stop Me Now and can reproduce them. The inaccuracies in his vocal intonation are almost certainly due to physical issues rather than perceptual, since his reproduction of the chords suggests that he has absolute pitch. It appears that the words of the song have been processed purely as different qualities of sound rather than in any symbolic way.

Domain, Level, Element:

P.5.A … performs short and simple pieces of music, potentially of growing length and complexity, increasingly ‘in time’ and (where relevant) ‘in tune’

Summative assessment:

P.5.Emerging … performs pieces solo at the level of the ‘initial’ or Grade 1 in the UK public music examination system