Students learning Music listen, perform and compose. They learn about the elements of music comprising rhythm, pitch, dynamics and expression, form and structure, timbre and texture. Aural skills, or ear training, are the particular listening skills students develop to identify and interpret the elements of music. Aural skills development is essential for making and responding to a range of music while listening, composing, and performing. Learning through music is a continuous and sequential process, enabling the acquisition, development and revisiting of skills and knowledge with increasing depth and complexity.

Making in Music involves active listening, imitating, improvising, composing, arranging, conducting, singing, playing, comparing and contrasting, refining, interpreting, recording and notating, practising, rehearsing, presenting and performing.

Responding in Music involves students being audience members listening to, enjoying, reflecting on, analysing, appreciating and evaluating their own and others’ musical works.

Both making and responding involve developing aural understanding of the elements of music through experiences in listening, performing and composing. The elements of music work together and underpin all musical activity. Students learn to make music using the voice, body, instruments, found sound sources, and information and communication technology. Music is recorded and communicated as notation by a unique system of symbols and terminology, and as audio recordings using technology. With increasing experience of the elements of music, students develop analytical skills and aesthetic understanding.