Course: MUS 156 Music Theory I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 5 of 16 (Week 5) · two sessions per week
Objectives: SLO 2 · SLO 7

This file holds two pieces: (A) the Week 5 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 5 Overview — Start Here

Welcome to Unit 5: Minor, Three Ways

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.

Your ear files every song under major or minor by the second bar — it's been doing that since before you could name a single note. This unit names the minor half of that filing system, and it turns out the minor drawer holds three things, not one: a natural form (exactly what the key signature says), a harmonic form (the seventh raised to lean on home), and a melodic form (the climb smoothed going up, the signature restored coming down). Along the way the scale degrees get their proper names — tonic, dominant, leading tone and the rest — and the solfège you sing in Aural Skills I grows its minor syllables. By the end of the week you'll own something worth saying out loud: all thirty keys — fifteen major from unit 4, fifteen minor now.

The unit's big question

"Your ear knows major from minor already. What exactly changes on the page — and why does minor come in three forms?"

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.

• [ ] Name the relative minor of any major key — and never confuse it with the parallel minor again (relatives share a signature; parallels share a tonic).
• [ ] Spell any minor key three ways: natural, harmonic, and melodic (both directions), every letter used exactly once.
• [ ] Explain why the raised notes are written as accidentals in the music and never added to the key signature — and why raising a flat note makes a natural, not a sharp.
• [ ] Call every scale degree by name — tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, submediant — and use subtonic vs leading tone correctly for ^7.
• [ ] Sing all three forms in do-based solfège: me, le, te for minor's lowered degrees, with ti (harmonic) and la ti (melodic ascending) for the raises.

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

• Memorize the three recipes cold: natural = the signature; harmonic = raise ^7; melodic = raise ^6 and ^7 up, let both go down. Every question in this unit is one of those three sentences wearing a costume.
• Say both relationships out loud for one key (try F major): relative = d minor, shares the flat; parallel = f minor, four flats of its own. If you can say that pair without hesitating, the quiz's hardest distinction is already yours.
• The signature spells natural — always. Raised notes ride in the music as accidentals. And a raised flat becomes a natural: c minor's B♭ lifts to B, never B♯.
• Sing the syllables while you spell. Le to la, te to ti — the syllable that moves is the note that moves, and the Aural Skills I session uses the identical ladder the same week.
• Treat your chatbot as a smart intern, not an oracle. Minor scales are where it gets confidently wrong — repeated letters, "simplified" spellings, raises smuggled into the signature. 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.

(B) Welcome Announcement — Week 5

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

Subject: One tune, three minors — and all thirty keys by the end of the week

Hi everyone,

Quick experiment before the first session: hum the darkest song you love. You just used everything this unit teaches — you simply haven't been handed the names yet. Our motto hasn't moved: you already hear this; we're going to name what you already know.

This unit — Minor, Three Ways — the minor half of the map arrives. Every key signature you learned in unit 4 turns out to have a second tenant: a minor key that shares its notes but calls a different note home. And minor itself comes in three working forms — natural, harmonic, melodic — each one a recipe you'll be able to say in a single sentence by week's end.

Three things not to miss:

1. Read the Week 5 chapter first — the three recipes, the degree names, and the minor solfège all live there, and everything else this week assumes them.
2. Tutorial 5 is due before the second session (before Week 5's second session) — your AI tutor session plus the audit step. Fair warning: minor scales are where chatbots misspell with total confidence. Catching them is the graded part.
3. The second session is a doing class: the "Three minors, one tune" studio (20 points, in session) — Wayfaring Stranger wears all three forms, your ears call which is which, and we end by singing the new syllables the room will use again in Aural Skills I.

Everything else — practice set, quiz, discussion, and the Five Keys, Three Ways assignment — closes the end of Week 5. The Start Here page in this module lays it all out in order with points.

One more thing worth circling: when this week ends, you can spell all thirty keys. That's not a small milestone — that's the whole map.

See you in this class,
Professor Hemsworth

Canvas placement block

# (A) Overview page
canvas_object    = Page
title            = "Week 5 Overview — Start Here · Minor, Three Ways"
published        = true
module_position  = first item in the Week 5 module

# (B) Welcome announcement
canvas_object    = Announcement
title            = "One tune, three minors — and all thirty keys by the end of the week"
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 5 module.