Music Merit Badge
Boy Scouts of America Merit Badge Hub
Boy Scouts of America
Merit Badge Hub
Music Merit Badge Overview
The history of music is rich and exciting. Through the ages, new music has been created by people who learned from tradition, then explored and innovated. All the great music has not yet been written. Today, the possibilities for creating new music are limitless.
MusicMerit Badge Requirements
The requirements will be fed dynamically using the scout book integration
1. Sing or play a simple song or hymn chosen by your counselor, using good technique, phrasing, tone, rhythm, and dynamics. Read all the signs and terms of the score.
2. Name the five general groups of musical instruments. Create an illustration that shows how tones are generated and how instruments produce sound.
3. Do TWO of the following:
- (a) Attend a live performance, or listen to three hours of recordings from any two of the following musical styles: blues, jazz, classical, country, bluegrass, ethnic, gospel, musical theater, opera. Describe the sound of the music and the instruments used. Identify the composers or songwriters, the performers, and the titles of the pieces you heard. If it was a live performance, describe the setting and the reaction of the audience. Discuss your thoughts about the music.
- (b) Interview an adult member of your family about music. Find out what the most popular music was when he or she was your age. Find out what his or her favorite music is now, and listen to three of your relative's favorite tunes with him or her. How do those favorites sound to you? Had you ever heard any of them? Play three of your favorite songs for your relative, and explain why you like these songs. Ask what he or she thinks of your favorite music.
- (c) Serve for six months as a member of a school band, choir, or other organized musical group, or perform as a soloist in public six times.
- (d) List five people who are important in the history of American music and explain to your counselor why they continue to be influential. Include at least one composer, one performer, one innovator, and one person born more than 100 years ago.
4. Do ONE of the following:
- (a) Teach three songs to a group of people. Lead them in singing the songs, using proper hand motions.
- (b) Compose and write the score for a piece of music of 12 measures or more, and play this music on an instrument.
- (c) Make a traditional instrument and learn to play it.
5. Define for your counselor intellectual property (IP). Explain how to properly obtain and share recorded music.
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Get the Music Merit Badge Pamphlet
This digital download merit badge pamphlet includes requirements and directions on earning both the Music and Bugling merit badges!
Discover more about "Music"
After the Omaha Symphony’s family concert last March, most musicians headed home or to dinner, or perhaps to a freelance gig. Not assistant principal bassist Bill Ritchie. The longtime Scouter walked down the hall to teach the Music merit badge alongside principal tubist Craig Fuller, a former assistant Scoutmaster.“I’m already there,” Ritchie says. “I just bring my Scout shirt on Sunday, switch gears and start the workshop.”The symphony’s annual merit badge workshops, which Ritchie and Fuller have led since 2002, are about more than convenience. They’re also about bringing a badge to life in ways that wouldn’t be possible at a troop meeting or summer camp.You can build a similar program around a concert in your community. Here’s how:Making ConnectionsAlthough Scouts don’t have to attend a live concert to earn the badge — that’s one of several options in requirement 3 — a concert connects neatly with several other requirements for the badge.Depending on the type of concert Scouts attend, they’ll see and hear most of the families of musical instruments (requirement 2) and be exposed to several people who have been important in the history of American music (requirement 3d).“We try to pull in the composers of the music they’ve heard,” Fuller says. “Of course, it depends on the concert, but most family concerts have some John Williams, so we talk about this iconic film composer a bit.”Crossing BoundariesJohn Williams was indeed on the program in March. The orchestra played “Flight to Neverland” from Hook. The pirate-themed concert also included Reinhold Glière’s “Russian Sailors’ Dance” and an orchestral version of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”“Family concerts introduce them to our cornerstone classical composers such as Mendelssohn and Holst but also some more familiar, contemporary selections,” says Liz Kendall Weisser, the Omaha Symphony’s education and community engagement manager.Family concerts often include several styles of music, which can help Scouts see the commonalities among different genres.“We talk about how the symphony instruments are the same instruments you hear in jazz,” Fuller says. “You play the instruments the same way in jazz as you do in classical; it’s just the music itself that’s a little different.”Maintaining FocusNot every requirement connects to the concert experience, so the Omaha Symphony asks Scouts to complete requirement 4 at home and bring proof to the workshop.Many, Ritchie says, choose to make their own instruments (requirement 4c).“Some of them are clever; some of them are simple,” he says. “You can tell if someone’s really put some work into it.”And years later, you can tell if the workshop has had an impact. One of Fuller’s students at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where he teaches tuba and euphonium, completed the workshop several years ago.“He told me that it had an influence on him going on to become a musician,” he says. “That was pretty cool.”
Eagle Required