Students in Fifth grade music class are finishing up their unit learning about chord progressions and building chords. We've been singing and playing songs containing I-V and I-IV-V accompaniments. The students have been identifying the tonic, dominant and subdominant chords in various key signatures and learning about how chords work together to support songs. Beginning next week we will start studying the blues and writing blues songs over the 12-bar blues progression.

5th Grade's Got the Blues

Fifth graders have begun the final phase of our blues unit, composing and arranging their own blues lyrics using the 12-bar blues chord progression. Students have learned to identify the chord roots using the 1st, 4th and 5th notes of a major scale and label them using roman numerals (I, IV, and V) as well as the standard musical labels of "tonic," "subdominant," and "dominant." These three primary chords (we likened them to the primary colors of red, yellow and blue) are the basic chords upon which most popular music, rock songs, and folk songs are built around. Students have listened to legendary blues musicians including Bessie Smith, Huddie Ledbetter and Robert Johnson. Who are your favorite blues musicians?