Music, BA (Hons), with industry placement

Course summary

Showcase and develop your musical talents with our links to local venues and performers and benefit from our well-equipped practice rooms, recording studios, and award-winning theatre. Master your instrument with our specialist 1:1 tutors. Gain the practical, critical and technical skills you need to expand your understanding of music in all forms and make your mark in today’s rapidly changing landscape. Explore music from different cultures and get hands-on helping disabled performers compose.

• Professional development programme that provides invaluable work placement and performance opportunities.

• Rehearsal and recording facilities, including individual practice rooms, a professional recording environment, digital audio workstations and instrumental facilities ranging from Steinway and Bosendorfer pianos to guitar amps, electronic keyboards and midi-guitar synthesisers.

• Societies and groups, such as our gospel choir, concert band, ukelele society, gamelan group, orchestra and more.

• Learn from teachers with world-class reputations for research expertise, many who have come from industry and are acclaimed in their field, and benefit from links with the University’s exciting Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research.

In your first year, you’ll lay the foundations for an intelligent engagement with creative practice and the world of music through studies in developing musicianship, Western music tradition, the music of diverse cultures, composition and music technology. You will also be involved in group musical activities designed to develop your performance skills. In your second year, you'll broaden your musical horizons; this prepares you to engage wholeheartedly toward your final year and embrace a specialism you enjoy (e.g. music as therapy). Undertake an optional placement year where you can build a number of key employability skills. Put theory into practice, get a taste for your chosen career and expand upon your professional network. In your final year, you'll gain independence in your creative musical practice throughout a combination of taught sessions and tutor-led development. The programme offers specialist pathways leading to an exit award (i.e. performance, composition, ethnomusicology, technology or an inclusive combination). As such, you will be able to specialise in a music-related area of your choosing in negotiation with your dissertation supervisor. Intercalated medical students (or those interested in music therapy), can find significance in an area within music and medicine/healing. Those interested in teaching might pursue pedagogy. Film composers could creatively embrace a collaborative project; performers can perform. Similarly, students eager to excel in music technology can produce an inspiring project (which may even facilitate them onto our ResM in Computer Music following graduation). Some engage in community music projects or something more traditional. The modules shown for this course or programme are those being studied by current students, or expected new modules. Modules are subject to change depending on year of entry.