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 DP music course 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 – exploration of diverse musical material in authentic ways. Students will engage with a diverse range of music that will be used as a stimuli to expand their own music-making.
   • Experimenting with Music – students connect theoretical studies to practical work and gain a deeper understanding of the music they engage with. They undertake a series of musical experiments in creating and performing based on selected stimuli.
   • Presenting Music – students present music to communicate the artistic intentions of completed works from the four areas of inquiry.  Students perform or present music to an audience as researchers, creators, and performers.

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.

The Role of Music Technology in the Course

 For 21^st-century musicians, learning to make music by engaging with a range of technologies is now a fundamental skill and is therefore a central aspect of the IB Diploma Music course. Technology creates opportunities for musicians to study music, collaborate and share musical ideas across time, place and culture.  Students will have the opportunity to use technology to record music or sounds, synthesise new sounds, sample music, process and edit sounds, music programming (sequencing and automation), use electronic devices as instruments, and use apps and specific software to create and/or perform music.

Contexts

 Students are required to engage with the diverse nature of music, looking beyond their own contexts to explore music with which they are unfamiliar, and which will broaden both their cultural and musical perspectives. The three contexts used within the diploma music course are:

• Personal – music that has significance to the student, and that they are most familiar with.
• Local – music that has local significance within the students’ local, regional or cultural communities.
• Global – unfamiliar music from a variety of places, societies and cultures.