Course: MUS 156 Music Theory I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 12 of 16 (Week 12) · two sessions per week
Objectives: SLO 5 · SLO 7

This file holds two pieces: (A) the Week 12 Overview page ("Start Here") and (B) the Welcome Announcement that posts when the module opens. All timing is relative — "Week N" language throughout.

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(A) Week 12 Overview — Start Here

Welcome to Unit 12: Cadences and Phrases

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 gave every chord a job — tonic, predominant, dominant — and set the functional cycle spinning. This unit asks the cycle one question: where does it land? Music moves in phrases — thoughts the length of a sung breath — and every phrase ends with a cadence: a landing your ear has been grading your whole life. Full stop, comma, plot twist, Amen — this week those feelings get their five names (PAC, IAC, half, deceptive, plagal), plus the famous decoration that looks like tonic and behaves like dominant (the cadential six-four), plus the question-and-answer shape phrases love to make (antecedent, consequent, period). Nothing here is new to your ear. All of it is new to your vocabulary — which is the course working exactly as advertised.

The unit's big question

"You can already feel the difference between a song that's finished, a song that's pausing, and a song that just swerved. What are those landings called — and how does naming them let a whole band end a song together?"

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.

• [ ] Define a cadence as the landing that ends a phrase — and explain why "cadence" doesn't mean "the ending."
• [ ] Run the two-condition PAC test (both chords root position AND melody on do) and label any authentic cadence PAC or IAC with evidence.
• [ ] Label half, deceptive, and plagal cadences from a keyed progression — including the minor-key deceptive pair with its harmonic-minor spelling (in A minor: E–G♯–B to F–A–C).
• [ ] Explain the cadential six-four: written I6/4, bass on sol, looks like tonic, behaves like dominant.
• [ ] Define a phrase by its cadence (not its bar count) and diagram a period: antecedent asks, consequent answers with a PAC.

What to do this unit, in order

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

#	Do this	Type	Points	Due
1	Read the Week 12 chapter — the five landings, the six-four, and the period, with every example spelled out	Chapter (ungraded prep)	—	Before the first session if you can
2	Browse the Readings & Resources links that interest you — two carry a British-dialect alert worth seeing	Prep (ungraded)	—	Alongside class
3	Tutorial 12 — Cadences and Phrases (AI tutor + audit) — your chatbot teaches, you learn, then you audit it on your own knowledge (the six-four is where the tools stumble)	Tutorial · graded	10	before Week 12's second session — before the studio, whose prediction rounds build on it
4	Studio 12 — "Where does it land" — in class, session 2: predict cadences before they arrive, hunt them in hymns, then build endings your group performs blind. Bring your instrument.	Studio · graded in session	20	In session, Week 12's second session (async make-up at full credit by the end of Week 12)
5	Practice 12 (AI coach) — six quick reps before the quiz	Practice · graded (completion)	5	the end of Week 12
6	Quiz 12 — Cadences and Phrases — 10 questions, 15-minute timer, one attempt, closed to AI	Quiz · graded	10	the end of Week 12
7	Discussion 12 — "Where the Song Breathes" — map the phrases and landings in a song you actually play; post the summary + share link (that post is the whole submission)	Discussion · graded	10	the end of Week 12
8	Assignment 12 — "Twenty Landings" — twenty described endings, labeled and built with your AI coach; the coach's report (score on line 1) + share link	Assignment · graded	100	the end of Week 12

Your Chart, meanwhile: milestone 2 (progression drafted) is behind you, and milestone 3 (lead sheet drafted) arrives next unit. No new Chart deliverable this week — but as you work this unit, listen to your Chart song for its phrases and landings. You'll be labeling its cadences on the final deliverable, and this is the week that skill shows up.

The late-work policy is in the syllabus.

How to succeed this unit

• Let your ear go first, every time. Before you label any cadence on paper, sing the bass motion — sol to do, sol up to la, or parked on sol. The label is just the name of what your voice did.
• Memorize two facts cold: the PAC needs both conditions (root position and do on top), and the cadential six-four has sol in the bass — looks like tonic, behaves like dominant. Those two settle half the unit.
• Evidence, not vibes. "IAC — because the melody ends on mi" beats "IAC" alone, in the tutorial, on the quiz, and in every rehearsal conversation you'll ever have.
• Treat your chatbot as a smart intern, not an oracle. This week it will confidently call any V–I "a perfect cadence" and call the six-four "a tonic chord." Catching that is graded work — and your audit runs on your own knowledge. You're ready.
• Do the tutorial before the second session. The studio predicts landings all morning and assumes its reps; the pre-studio deadline is the one mid-week deadline, same as every week.

Come to the first session with your ears. They've been grading landings for years — this week they finally get the words.

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(B) Welcome Announcement — Week 12

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

Subject: Stop one chord early — your ear already knows the rest

Hi everyone,

Try this tonight: hum any song you love and stop one chord before the end. Feel that itch? You know exactly what's missing — you could sing it right now. That reflex is Unit 12. Music moves in phrases, every phrase lands somewhere, and you've been grading those landings your whole life: finished, pausing, or swerved. This week the landings get their names — PAC, IAC, half, deceptive, plagal — plus the famous chord that looks like tonic and behaves like dominant, plus the question-and-answer shape (the period) that makes tunes like Ode to Joy feel inevitable.

This unit — Cadences and Phrases — is where endings stop being luck. the studio is a prediction game that turns into a performance: I stop progressions one chord early, you vote and sing what's coming — and then your group builds three different endings and plays them for a room that has to identify each one blind. Bring your instrument.

Three things not to miss:

1. Tutorial 12 is due before the second session (before Week 12's second session) — the studio's prediction rounds assume its reps, and this week's tutor audit hunts the six-four error every chatbot loves to make.
2. The second session is a playing class. Predictions, a hymn hunt (Old Hundredth, Come Thou Fount, Joy to the World), and endings your group performs live. 20 points, in session, instrument welcome.
3. Your Chart song has cadences in it. No new milestone this week — but listen for where your song breathes as you work. The lead-sheet milestone lands next unit, and this vocabulary is going straight onto it.

Everything else — practice set, quiz, discussion, and the Twenty Landings assignment — closes the end of Week 12. The Start Here page in this module lays it all out in order with points.

Bring your ears to the first session. They already know where everything lands.

See you in this class,
Professor Hemsworth

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Canvas placement block

# (A) Overview page
canvas_object    = Page
title            = "Week 12 Overview — Start Here · Cadences and Phrases"
published        = true
module_position  = first item in the Week 12 module

# (B) Welcome announcement
canvas_object    = Announcement
title            = "Stop one chord early — your ear already knows the rest"
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 12 module.

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