GCSE Music help pls

5

If I use words for my composition from a like 200 year old poem, will that be counted as plagiarism? Just need words to put some music too and I don't really want to have to make them up myself when I can use words from someone who knows what they're doing! The exam board is Edexcel.

(edited 11 months ago)

Reply 1

aishaniroy

7

Original post

by Rosh32

If I use words for my composition from a like 200 year old poem, will that be counted as plagiarism? Just need words to put some music too and I don't really want to have to make them up myself when I can use words from someone who knows what they're doing! The exam board is Edexcel.

hii
i do aqa but as far as i know, it is plagarism and its not your composition unless you have made it yourself. you can use the poem as inspiration but you must write your own lyrics.

Reply 2

Rosh32

OP

5

Original post

by aishaniroy

hii
i do aqa but as far as i know, it is plagarism and its not your composition unless you have made it yourself. you can use the poem as inspiration but you must write your own lyrics.

Thank you!

Reply 3

august_gilmore

7

hi, I did gcses last year and got a 9 in music!
sorry to conflict the person before me, but my teacher actually encouraged us to take lyrics from an existing source as you get no credit/marks for writing your own lyrics. i actually did theme and variations for both of my pieces (and used existing music for both themes), but I had a friend who did songs with lyrics for her composition and she quite literally copied the lyrics from taylor swift's love story lol.
maybe double check with ur teacher to make sure x

Reply 4

Luhvelylee

4

Original post

by august_gilmore

hi, I did gcses last year and got a 9 in music!
sorry to conflict the person before me, but my teacher actually encouraged us to take lyrics from an existing source as you get no credit/marks for writing your own lyrics. i actually did theme and variations for both of my pieces (and used existing music for both themes), but I had a friend who did songs with lyrics for her composition and she quite literally copied the lyrics from taylor swift's love story lol.
maybe double check with ur teacher to make sure x

Hey, I picked music GCSE as my options this year and what would be your advice as someone aiming for grade 8/9.

Reply 5

ash122

8

Original post

by Luhvelylee

Hey, I picked music GCSE as my options this year and what would be your advice as someone aiming for grade 8/9.

I did GCSE music and I would recommend making sure you really know each of the musical elements for each of the pieces (e.g texture, structure, tonality...). That should help you to pick a quite a lot of marks fairly easily.
For the unknown piece, I would recommend listening to many different types of music and trying to identify some features about them (I used ABRSM aural test books to help me with that)

Reply 6

Luhvelylee

4

Original post

by ash122

I did GCSE music and I would recommend making sure you really know each of the musical elements for each of the pieces (e.g texture, structure, tonality...). That should help you to pick a quite a lot of marks fairly easily.
For the unknown piece, I would recommend listening to many different types of music and trying to identify some features about them (I used ABRSM aural test books to help me with that)

Thank you ❤️

Reply 7

august_gilmore

7

Original post

by Luhvelylee

Hey, I picked music GCSE as my options this year and what would be your advice as someone aiming for grade 8/9.

hi, sry for the late reply - hopefully this is still helpful.

my advice from doing edexcel is that make sure your performance + composition sections are really strong.
it's a bit like for an abrsm music exam, you want to make sure your exam pieces + scales are really strong bc those are the things you can control and you know will come up. likewise, you have the entire two years to work on ur performance (which u can record as many times as u want) and composition which u don't have time constraints on.

specifically, for performance, the best way to secure marks is to pick a grade 5 piece. the minimum standard you must play at is grade 4 but choosing a grade 5 piece will let u have the chance of securing full marks for performance. even if you are grade 8, please take my advice and do a grade 5 piece because there is no point playing a technically more difficult piece which you can lose marks for playing mistakes when you can do a grade 5 piece for less effort but securing the same number of marks. practise it and aim for full marks and full marks only!!

for composition, this is a lot trickier, choose some pieces for inspiration and ask ur teacher for help and follow their feedback. my gcse music teacher was the one to mark my composition, so even if i disagreed with him i still followed his advice lol. the more time u spend working on ur composition, and acting on feedback, the better it will be so try and use some time after school/in ur lunchtimes to work on it. out of my entire class, i was the one who spent the most time on composition and i scored the best and was the only one to get a 9 - sometimes the only way to do well is to just work hard, there's no way around it.

if u are doing edexcel, the grade boundary is one of the highest across all the subjects! it's something along the lines of 85% for a 9, if i'm correct, which is why it is so so SO important that you get as close to full marks as you can in ur composition and performance sections bc coming from a person getting a 9, the written exam is really hard.

if you think about it, if you get 90% across ur composition + performance sections means that you can't score less than 80% in the written exam because if you do you will average less than 85% and ur grade will go down. i got away with scoring 70-something because my composition + performance sections were really strong. some people in my class scored higher than me on the written exam but got a lower grade bc their composition + performance sections weren't as good.

if you want to do well in the written exam, split up the exam into its separate components and think about which sections you're the weakest in:

•

if you struggle in the recalling of knowledge for set works, practise "blurting" for each set work - write down what you can rmb from each set work and then use a different coloured pen to write down what you missed/recalled incorrectly. practise this often, even more frequently as you approach the exam and you should be okay

•

dictation - try and find loads of practise questions for this. try and identify whether you find melody or rhythm harder and get someone to practise with you. e.g. if you struggle with melody, ask someone to play you a melody and you write it down on a score. if you run out of practise materials, use the a-level ones, even though the question is slightly different the skill is the same

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unfamiliar listening - i agree with the person before me. try and listen to other pieces of music outside the syllabus for short periods of time (e.g. 30s) or even when ur listening to ur own music, try and write down what you can hear - what instruments? melodic devices? rhythm, tempo, metre etc? this will get used to being more sensitive and observant of what you listened to

•

essay - my worst section! make sure u plan ur essay effectively and give urself plenty of time to write it. in the final exam, if i finished early on one of the other sections, i would go and write the essay, the essay is tricky and the national average is like 3/12, so don't be worried if you are struggling at it.

this may seem like an exhaustive list, but it's only a glimpse of a little I can give you! lmk if you have questions about anything in particular.
i'm currently doing music a-level and i really enjoy it now, just as i did at gcse

best of luck on ur gcse music journey!!

Reply 8

TaliaArnaout

1

Original post

by Rosh32

If I use words for my composition from a like 200 year old poem, will that be counted as plagiarism? Just need words to put some music too and I don't really want to have to make them up myself when I can use words from someone who knows what they're doing! The exam board is Edexcel.