The 21st-Century musician must prepare for a world in which global musical cultures and industries are rapidly changing.  DP music students must be able to strategize, plan, execute and justify their creative choices to secure an advantaged position in a contemporary world. Through its integrated approach, the course will equip students with strongly developed creative thinking skills, holistic mindsets and flexible design- and project-based skills, all of which are highly sought after by universities and employers.

The new DP music course (commencing 2021) has been designed to address these transformations by clarifying and strengthening its approach to student creativity through practical, informed and purposeful explorations of diverse musical forms, practices and contexts. Proficiency on an instrument and well as regular tuition is a requirement of this course.

Through this course, teachers and students will be empowered to recognize how technical training and creative competencies combine to inform practical work and contribute to the formation of well-rounded modern musicians. The new course achieves this by scaffolded and guided approaches to:

1. • performance proficiency
   • compositional craft
   • the ability to discuss music critically
   • the ability to justify creative choices, and
   • the capacity for entrepreneurship in the musical world

Throughout the course, students embody three roles: the researcher, the creator and the performer. In these roles, they inquire, create, perform and reflect on the course’s three musical processes:

1. • Exploring music in context
   • Experimenting with music
   • Presenting music

Students will be required to explore music material from a personal, local and global perspective. There will be a portfolio submission for each of these three processes. Research, composition and performance are all integrated within these processes.  Higher Level (HL) and Standard Level (SL) must complete all three musical processes, Higher Level students will complete an extra personal project documenting their experience as a contemporary music-maker.