The compositional process is informed by the teaching sequence of musical skills as outlined previously. Students begin by working with the simplest rhythmic and melodic elements, mastering these before continuing. It is important that the aural aspect of this process is emphasised, so students are required to sing their compositions. This demonstrates understanding of the pitch and rhythmic concepts being used and ensures that their melodies are coherent, following Kodály’s mandate that they are hearing what they are writing, and writing what they are hearing. The composing process can be broken down into 4 steps: Composing Phrases, Analysing Phrases, Selecting Phrases, and Manipulating Phrases. Composing Phrases Students use familiar musical elements to compose a number of phrases. For example, in a Year Seven context, students will be familiar with do re mi, and the rhythm syllables ta, ti-ti, and za. Phrase lengths at this stage of development might only be one bar long. The student would compose four one-bar phrases, using only the elements listed. Analysing Phrases The phrases that have been written by the student are now analysed for their rhetoric (at this point, there is no distinction between Statements and Answers). This will help to determine which phrases are suitable in the next step. Selecting Phrases Students now select which of their composed phrases they wish to use. This is a decision informed by considering both the form and rhetoric of the exemplar being modelled, and the rhetorical analysis of their phrases. For instance, should the exemplar have structure AABA, then the student should model their composition on this form. Students should also account for the ending of their piece at this stage – In this case, choosing a question phrase as the A theme may lead to an unsatisfying ending. Manipulating Phrases Once the selected phrases have been pieced together, manipulation of the source material can take place. While there are a multitude of ways in which this can be done, the following are addressed in this dissertation: i. Modal and real transposition ii. Modal and real inversion