Music

Music Department

Junior Cycle Music focuses on three areas of music:

Creating and exploring music
Participating in music and music making
Appraising and responding to music

How to compose melodies, rhythms, chords, songs, raps, jingles and other types of compositions using instruments, your voice, digital technology and any objects that make sounds.
How to take an existing piece of music and adapt it by experimenting with style, feel and harmony.
How to create playlists of songs and recordings to accompany events.
Explore how music is used to represent characters in different styles of music.
How to perform songs and pieces of music using instruments, your voice, digital technology and any objects make sounds on your own and as part of a group.
How to use musical notation to learn music and to write down music that you hear.
How to compose and create music and sounds to accompany drama, tv shows, films or images.
How to express emotions and moods using music.
How to talk about and compare different pieces of music and different types of music from different styles and different countries.
How to analyse pieces of music and songs to understand how they were created.
How to recognise different types of instruments and voices and what certain instruments are good at.
Explore the connection between music and technology, in particular the use of different types of effects on musical sounds.
Explore the connection between musical sounds and words, images and language.
Explore Irish composers and songwriters, music property rights and how well Irish artists are represented in TV and radio.

Students undertaking the Leaving Certificate music course will develop skills in the following areas:

Performing
Composing
Listening

The course is divided evenly between these areas (25% each) and students choose which of these areas to focus on for their elective (the extra 25%). The performance elective is the most popular option meaning that 50% of a student’s final grade is based on performance