Course: MUS 156 Music Theory I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 2 of 16 (Week 2) · two sessions per week
Objectives: SLO 1 · SLO 7

This file holds two pieces: (A) the Week 2 Overview page ("Start Here") and (B) the Welcome Announcement that posts when the module opens. All timing is relative — "Week N" language throughout.

(A) Week 2 Overview — Start Here

Welcome to Unit 2: Pulse and Page

This is your home base for the unit. Read it first, then work the checklist below from top to bottom. Everything on it is linked inside this module.

Last unit every note got a where — an exact address like F♯4. This unit every note gets a when. And once again you're not starting from zero: your body has kept time at every gig, worship set, and long drive of your life. Your foot finds the pulse without being asked; you feel it when the drummer rushes. This unit hands that skill its vocabulary — beats, values, meters, counting syllables, dots, and ties — so the groove you play tonight can be written down and played the same way twice. A where plus a when is written music: after this week, you can notate both.

The unit's big question

"Your foot has kept time at every gig you've ever played. What exactly is it counting — and how do you write one bar of it down so the band plays it the same way twice?"

By the end of this unit, you can…

Use this as a checklist. If you can do all five out loud, the quiz will feel like confirmation.

• [ ] Find and hold the beat under a groove, and classify its meter as duple, triple, or quadruple.
• [ ] Read and write the five note values and their rests, knowing each value equals two of the next one down — proportions, never clock time.
• [ ] Read a time signature both ways: top number = beats per bar, bottom number = the note value that carries the beat — and check any bar's math against it.
• [ ] Count any simple-meter bar aloud: numbers on the beats, "&" at the division, "1 e & a" at the subdivision.
• [ ] Use the dot (adds half the note's own value) and the tie (one pitch, one unbroken sound) correctly — and handle a pickup's bookkeeping.

What to do this unit, in order

The table below lists the unit's items in working order, with points and due dates.

The late-work policy is in the syllabus.

How to succeed this unit

• Keep a beat going while you study. Tap your foot or run a metronome app under every example — rhythm on paper only makes sense against a live grid. Counting out loud is not optional decoration; it's the skill.
• Memorize two facts cold: the dot adds half the note's own value (dotted quarter = 1½ beats, not 2), and the time signature's bottom number is a note value, not a count. Those two settle half the unit.
• Run bar math on everything. Every measure must total what its signature promises. Check your own bars before anyone plays them — it's the fastest error-catcher you'll ever own.
• Treat your chatbot as a smart intern, not an oracle. This week it will confidently tell you a dot "adds a beat." Catching that is graded work this week — twice.
• Do the tutorial before the second session. The studio assumes it; the pre-studio deadline is the one mid-week deadline this course ever asks of you, and it's the same every week.

No prior music-reading experience is assumed in this course — that's by design, not by accident. Come to the first session with your ears and your foot; everything else is provided.

(B) Welcome Announcement — Week 2

Release: posts on the module's opening day (drip — not before). Ships workflow_state=active with side_comment discussion; see placement block.

Subject: This week we write down time — your foot already knows

Hi everyone,

Great first week — you can now hand any note an exact address. This week, the other half of written music: when.

Here's the claim, same spine as last week: you already keep excellent time. You've locked into grooves for years; you feel it instantly when somebody rushes. Unit 2 — Pulse and Page — names what your foot has been doing all along: the beat, the five note values, time signatures, counting with "1 e & a," and the two little tools (the dot and the tie) that spell every length the plain values can't.

Three things not to miss:

1. Read the Week 2 chapter first — the whole value family and the counting system live there, and everything else this week assumes them.
2. Tutorial 2 is due before the second session (before Week 2's second session) — your AI tutor session plus the audit step. This week's classic chatbot blunder: "the dot adds a beat." It doesn't (it adds half the note's own value), and catching that is scored work.
3. The second session is a doing class: the "Groove transcription" studio (20 points, in session). You'll hear grooves, count them out loud, write them down — and then a neighbor will play your bar back from the page. When what comes back is what you meant, that's notation working, and you'll have watched it happen.

Everything else — practice set, quiz, discussion, and the Count It, Write It assignment — closes the end of Week 2. The Start Here page in this module lays it all out in order with points.

Bring your foot to the first session. It's been rehearsing for years.

See you in this class,
Professor Hemsworth

Canvas placement block

# (A) Overview page
canvas_object    = Page
title            = "Week 2 Overview — Start Here · Pulse and Page"
published        = true
module_position  = first item in the Week 2 module

# (B) Welcome announcement
canvas_object    = Announcement
title            = "This week we write down time — your foot already knows"
workflow_state   = active
discussion_type  = side_comment
delayed_post_at  = module opening day (drip; offset 0 from module start)
# Announcements are NEVER module items — Canvas rejects them as module content.
# They live in the Announcements stream only; do not add this to the Week 2 module.