Course: MUS 156 Music Theory I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 14 of 16 (Week 14) · two sessions per week
Objectives: SLO 6 · SLO 7

This file holds two pieces: (A) the Week 14 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 14 Overview — Start Here

Welcome to Unit 14: Melody and Non-Chord Tones

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 you built the frame — two independent voices, every interval accounted for. This unit the frame gets dressed. Every singer you love adds notes that aren't in the chord: the slide between two melody notes, the note that lands before the band gets there, the held note that aches for a beat and then lets go. Those in-between notes have six names — passing tone, neighbor tone, suspension, anticipation, escape tone, appoggiatura — and each one has an entrance rule and an exit rule your ear has been enforcing for years without telling you. This week you learn the names, hunt them in melodies you love, and add your own to a frame that has to survive the decoration. Nothing here is new to your ear. All of it is new to your vocabulary — the course working exactly as advertised, two units from the finish line.

The unit's big question

"The best melodies are mostly in-between notes — so what are those notes called, what rules do they secretly follow, and how do you add your own without breaking the frame underneath?"

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.

• [ ] Describe a melody's contour, find its climax (it should land once), and say what a leap owes the line afterward.
• [ ] Run the entrance-and-exit interview on any in-between note and label it: PT, NT, SUS, ANT, ET, or APP.
• [ ] Walk a suspension's three phases — preparation, suspension, resolution down by step — and write its figure with the course's one legitimate hyphen: 4-3, 7-6, or 9-8 (slashes stack, hyphens move).
• [ ] Spot the augmented second in a minor-key line (harmonic minor's ^6 to ^7) and fix it without harming the leading tone.
• [ ] Embellish a two-voice frame so it still passes the voice-leading check: dissonance on the offbeats; the frame owns the beats.

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 14 chapter — the six names, the 2×2 grid, the hyphen figures, and the trap, every example spelled out	Chapter (ungraded prep)	—	Before the first session if you can
2	Browse the Readings & Resources links that interest you — including the studio's contour tune, sung	Prep (ungraded)	—	Alongside class
3	Tutorial 14 — Melody and Non-Chord Tones (AI tutor + audit) — your chatbot teaches, you learn, then you audit it on your own knowledge (the hyphen-versus-slash figures are where the tools stumble)	Tutorial · graded	10	before Week 14's second session — before the studio, whose fill hunt builds on it
4	Studio 14 — "Fill hunt" — in class, session 2: hear fills, hunt fills, sing the lean, then write your own into a frame that has to survive inspection. Bring your instrument.	Studio · graded in session	20	In session, Week 14's second session (async make-up at full credit by the end of Week 14)
5	Practice 14 (AI coach) — six quick reps before the quiz	Practice · graded (completion)	5	the end of Week 14
6	Quiz 14 — Melody and Non-Chord Tones — 10 questions, 15-minute timer, one attempt, closed to AI	Quiz · graded	10	the end of Week 14
7	Discussion 14 — "The Fill That Makes the Song" — name the move in a melodic moment you love; post the summary + share link (that post is the whole submission)	Discussion · graded	10	the end of Week 14
8	Assignment 14 — "Twenty Fills" — twenty problems ending with a real frame you embellish edit by edit; the coach's report (score on line 1) + share link	Assignment · graded	100	the end of Week 14

Also opening this week's second session: the complete final-exam review family. The review outline, the review deck, the study guide, the exam-prep tutorial, and the practice exam — all of it, released at once, on purpose. Here's the honest shape of the calendar: after next unit there is no study week — instruction ends and the final follows within days. So the review opens now, while there's still runway, and the smartest move in this course costs fifteen minutes: open the study guide this weekend, skim it, and let it tell you what the final will ask. The practice exam has unlimited attempts and counts for nothing — it exists purely to make the real one feel familiar.

Your Chart, meanwhile: milestone 3 (the lead sheet) is drafted, and the finished Chart is due next unit. No new milestone this week — but this week's vocabulary is your melody line's polish kit. The fills in your song are made of exactly these six notes; labeling two or three of them in your own transcription is the fastest way to make the final write-up sing.

The late-work policy is in the syllabus.

How to succeed this unit

• Let your ear go first, every time. Before you label anything, sing it — the lean of a suspension and the slip of an escape tone feel different in your throat before they look different on paper.
• Memorize two facts cold: the suspension's three phases end down by step, and slashes stack, hyphens move (6/4 is a chord; 4-3 is an event). Those two settle half the unit.
• Run the interview, always: how did the note arrive, how did it leave? The label alone is a guess; the entrance-and-exit evidence is an answer.
• Treat your chatbot as a smart intern, not an oracle. This week it will confidently write suspensions with slashes and "fix" the augmented second by breaking the leading tone. 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 hunts fills 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 fills for years — this week they finally get the words.

---

(B) Welcome Announcement — Week 14

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

Subject: The notes that aren't in the chord — and why they're the best ones

Hi everyone,

Try this tonight: put on a singer you love and listen only for the notes that aren't in the chord — the slide between two melody notes, the landing that comes half a beat early, the held note that aches and then lets go. There are more of them than you think, and not one sounds like a mistake. That's Unit 14. The in-between notes have six names, each with an entrance rule and an exit rule your ear already enforces — and once you can name them, you can hunt them in any melody and add your own on purpose.

This unit — Melody and Non-Chord Tones — is where your fills stop being luck. Last week you built the two-voice frame; this week you decorate it without breaking it. You'll also finally learn the one thing the hyphen means in this course (we've been saving it since unit 10), and you'll disarm the sneakiest melodic trap minor keys have.

Three things not to miss:

1. Tutorial 14 is due before the second session (before Week 14's second session) — the studio's fill hunt assumes its reps, and this week's tutor audit hunts the figure error every chatbot loves to make.
2. The second session is a hunting class. Plain-or-decorated ear rounds, a fill hunt through a printed melody, the whole room singing suspensions, and then your group writes fills into a frame another group gets to inspect. 20 points, in session, instrument welcome.
3. The entire final-exam review family opens with the second session — review outline, review deck, study guide, prep tutorial, practice exam. There's no study week between the last unit and the final, so the runway starts now. Fifteen minutes with the study guide this weekend is the cheapest insurance this course sells. (The practice exam: unlimited attempts, zero points, pure familiarity.)

Everything else — practice set, quiz, discussion, and the Twenty Fills assignment — closes the end of Week 14. The Start Here page in this module lays it all out in order with points. And keep your Chart warm: its melody is full of exactly the notes we're naming this week.

Bring your ears to the first session. The best notes in your favorite songs aren't in the chords — and after this week, you'll know their names.

See you in this class,
Professor Hemsworth

---

Canvas placement block

# (A) Overview page
canvas_object    = Page
title            = "Week 14 Overview — Start Here · Melody and Non-Chord Tones"
published        = true
module_position  = first item in the Week 14 module

# (B) Welcome announcement
canvas_object    = Announcement
title            = "The notes that aren't in the chord — and why they're the best ones"
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 14 module.

---