MUSIC THEORY LESSON Chords and Cadences

This is a fully resourced quality and structured lesson on chords and cadences. The pack includes handouts for easy revision, activities for maximum learning, a PowerPoint for teachers to deliver content effortlessly, and full answers for easy assessment. It is appropriate for any intermediate academic Music course in any English-speaking country.

This lesson focuses on Chords and Cadences. Specific content is as follows: Major/ Minor/ Diminished/ Augmented chords and how they fit into major and minor keys; Root Position/ First Inversion/ Second Inversion chords; Authentic/ Half/ Plagal/ Deceptive/ Picardy Third Cadences. Students are taken through the information with both an information sheet, and a step-by-step PowerPoint. 12 x written/ notation tasks spread over 3 x activities develop students’ ability to create, identify and interpret all basic chord types and the 5 main types of cadence (mentioned above). 10 x listening questions conclude the lesson, in which students’ ability to distinguish between Authentic and Half cadences is developed. Two Picardy Third cadences are also included in the listening test to challenge more gifted musicians. By the end of the lesson students will have a secure knowledge of chords and cadences.

This Teaching and Learning package includes a 33-slide PowerPoint (with notes for most slides providing the teacher with both instructions and suggestions) which makes the delivery of the lesson smooth and efficient. Ten of these PowerPoint slides are for the 10 listening questions, and you may well want to insert the audios into the slide rather than use media player. That’s up to you. Working with notation, developing listening skills, and acquiring skills that can also be applied to composition are vitally important for any intermediate-advanced Music course. You will find this lesson to be fully and comprehensively resourced in order to meet the needs of all three of these things, not to mention saving you (literally) hours of planning, too.

I really hope that you will enjoy my resources and find them useful. I pride myself on the quality of the resources and I welcome feedback and inquiries from my colleague-customers the world over. I can be contacted directly at rainynightmusic@hotmail.com and I would be delighted to hear from you. Thank you for considering this resource for your classroom.