Music Ace and the National Core Music Standards
How the Music Ace Maestro curriculum supports the 2014 National Core Arts Standards for Music, the framework most state music standards are built on.
The National Core Music Standards (2014, from the National Association for Music Education and the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards) organize music learning around four artistic processes: Creating, Performing, Responding, and Connecting. Each carries coded performance standards for every grade level.
Most states build their music standards directly on this framework, including California (2019), New York (2017), and Illinois (2016), so an alignment to the national standards carries to those states with the same codes. Texas uses its own framework (the music TEKS); its music-literacy strand calls for the same skills shown below.
The standards are process standards. They describe what students do: read, perform, improvise, notate, analyze, evaluate. Music Ace is built around exactly those actions. Below, each strand of the curriculum is mapped to the performance standards its lessons and games support.
- Cr · Creating
- Pr · Performing
- Re · Responding
- Cn · Connecting
Pitch & the staff
Lessons on pitch matching, staff basics, note names, ledger lines, treble & bass clefs, sharps & flats.
Rhythm & meter
Lessons on beat and tempo, note durations, time signatures, rests, and syncopation, performed in real time and scored.
The keyboard
Lessons connecting the staff to the piano keyboard: key names, octaves, white & black keys.
Scales, keys & tonality
Lessons on major and minor scales, key signatures, whole & half steps, learned structurally and by ear.
Intervals, harmony & ear training
The lessons most programs don't reach: intervals, chords, and hearing harmony, with listening woven into every activity.
Composition in the Doodle Pad
Students write music of their own from a blank page, or open classical excerpts from the Jukebox and rework them. Compose-a-melody activities appear inside lessons too.
One lesson, all four processes
The standards describe processes, and every Music Ace lesson runs students through them in order.
Echo and discrimination: hear the pattern, tell it apart from its neighbors.
Read the notation and perform it, with real-time evaluation and a score.
Compose a short melody that uses the new pattern.
Take the skill back to the ensemble, the practice room, and the repertoire.
For your curriculum office: the full alignment matrix maps every concept in the 48 Maestro lessons against the performance standards it supports. It is useful for adoption paperwork in NCAS states and for TEKS crosswalks in Texas. See the full matrix →
See the curriculum for yourself
The demo's main menu lists every lesson and what it covers.