BA (Hons) Music Performance and Production (With Foundation Year)

This course is perfect if you are a performer, songwriter, or composer who wants to work in music but doesn’t meet the standard entry requirements. There’s room for everyone with creative ideas on our course, even if you haven’t gained a formal music qualification. We’re interested in anyone who feels compelled to make music in some way. We don’t want to dictate your musical path. You’ll tell us where you want your music to take you. Then our teachers – all producers, composers, theorists, and performers themselves – will help you find your way there. We’ll develop your specialist skills in music production, songwriting, performance, and sound design. We’ll give you the facilities and equipment to create with and the stages to perform on, and we’ll underpin all this with a thorough examination of the history, culture, and business of music. Not only will we equip you to land a music industry job, we think you may just end up being the job!

Foundation Year

• Group Work 1
• Sound & Music Skills 1
• Group Work 2
• Sound & Music Skills 2
• Mental Wealth: Professional Life

Year 1

• Music Performance and Production Technique 1 (Core)
• Collaboration 1 (Core)
• Public Project 1 (Core)
• Music Performance and Production Technique 2 (Core)
• Collaboration 2 (Core)
• Professional Life 1 (Mental Wealth) (Core)

Year 2

• Music Performance and Production Craft 1 (Core)
• Multidisciplinary Collaboration 1 (Core)
• Public Project 2 (Core)
• Music Performance and Production Craft 2 (Core)
• Multidisciplinary Collaboration 2 (Core)
• Professional Life 2 (Mental Wealth) (Core)

Year 3

• Music Performance and Production Advanced (Core)
• Practice and Innovation (Core)
• Final Project: Research and Development (Core)
• Public Project 3 (Core)
• Music Performance and Production Advanced (Core)
• Practice and Enterprise (Core)
• Final Project: Engagement and Impact (Core)
• Professional Life 3 (Mental Wealth) (Core)

Employability

Our course is designed to turn our students into highly employable modern music professionals. The pathways that lead from our course into the industry are varied and stimulating. You could forge a career in contemporary or experimental music. Or you could choose to stay in the pop world. Or write film soundtracks. You could end up composing music for computer games. Anything would appear possible when you consider the range of careers that just a small cross-section of our students gone into since leaving us. Some go into the recording business, like Joe Power and Stephen Peeling, who are signed up to an independent record label with the post-rock band, Codes in the Clouds. While some graduates go on to work as music producers, sound designers, and DJs, others opt for the business side of the industry in areas such as music journalism and music teaching. Others choose to continue their studies, like Tomas Peckys, who’s doing a Ph.D. in Lithuanian dance culture. One of our alumni now even boasts a double musical life. By day, Phoebe Osborne is a music teacher but she moonlights as a singer-songwriter for the alternative folk band, Penniless Cove.