Music Production | BA (Hons) Degree

An introduction to fundamental music production tools, practices and skills. You will create and capture sounds using recording studios and Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs).

The unit encompasses a wide range of skills, ideas, tools and equipment and is intended to build your technical and creative practice.

This unit will develop your knowledge, confidence and skills in the area of Artist Development, whether you aim to be a performer, a producer, creator, or to promote some or all of the above.

This unit will include:

• Songwriting, track creation, composition, arrangement.
• The music business context: labels, publishers, management, DIY
• Establishing our creative community 
• Working independently in the creation of new repertoire.
• Collaboration in the creation of new repertoire.
• Team building for artists, producers, performers and managers.
• Well being and Mental Health for music practitioners
• Development of a personal voice, musical language,.
• Establishing an artist brand.
• Identifying gaps in skills and knowledge and planning effectively to fill those gaps.
• Instrumental technique lessons, Musical direction
• Performance skills - stage presence, dynamics, timbre, tone, control of sound, interaction with/sensitivity to other performers, professionalism.

This unit consists of lectures, workshops and seminars engaging you with a wide range ideas and theories relevant and applicable to your chosen discipline. The unit will build on your pre-existing knowledge by : 

This unit builds on skills developed in Creative Studio/DAW production 1 and offers you the opportunity to extend and develop your recording, composition or performance capture, sound design, arranging, recording and editing skills.

It aims to provide experience in several areas and encourage a broad knowledge base, offering the flexibility of a choice of assessment paths.

You will experiment with performance and real-time aspects of audio tools, and create a performance, which you will also record and submit. You will develop your critical ear, and take appropriate action to optimise your productions.

This unit expands your knowledge of a broad range of sonic processing in the context of mixing and mastering work. By becoming aware of the multiple options available to the producer and being able to choose the most appropriate solution, you will  refine your practice. The unit will explore popular processors and demonstrate methodologies for their common usage.

You will develop your ability to listen to changes critically, and to express your perceptions and audio experiences.

This unit builds on the work of the Artist Development module at Level 4 by providing an opportunity to collaborate with peers and external partners in the creation of new creative teams, repertoire and performances. These collaborations may be short term, one-off groupings and creative alliances, or they may prove to be the foundation of longer term, structured and regular meetings of creatives and the teams that support their work.

This unit encourages you to situate yourself within your practice. The unit asks questions about what we, as practitioners - as well as ‘beings’ in the world - bring to our respective disciplines and to the texts we perform, prosume and market to an audience. You are encouraged to attune your listening, thinking, reading and writing skills so that a range of subjects can be thoughtfully debated.

The Individual Project is your opportunity to engage in a sustained project that aims to allow your personal voice, ambitions and intentions in Music to emerge. You may demonstrate advanced musical technique with a high level of critical analysis.

Collective Practice provides the creative and practical space for you to develop and present refined, professional musical and commercial outcomes. Collaborative working provides an initial setting for you to engage in professional practice with peers or external networks, producing outcomes such as events, music releases, films, games, programmes, performance, festivals.

The dissertation is an investigation and critical discourse on your negotiated choice of a topic relevant to your course of study. Your dissertation on your chosen topic is assessed on submission of a written document or an oral presentation.

Professional Practice is an opportunity to plan and prepare for progression from the course onto next steps, whether those be on to further study, to employment, self-employment, founding a business, or combination of all or any of the above as appropriate to your development and ambitions

This unit will provide a range of different experiences, depending on the nature of your professional aims. Many students engage very successfully with local and national and virtual global events that support the production of new music and professional networks.

This unit is the culmination of your journey and provides the opportunity for you to apply your creative expertise to proscriptive media briefs (2 tracks), and an open final major project brief (usually 6 tracks). High production values are expected and you are required to adapt to the disparate demands of defined musical requirements and complete creative freedom.