Music Performance BMus (Hons)

This module is designed to develop your skills as an advanced solo and ensemble music practitioner. You will develop your problem-solving skills by focusing on solo and ensemble musicianship on your first study instrument or voice. 

As a portfolio musician, you will be expected to arrange material for a variety of instrumental and vocal combinations. This could be anything from a conventional mixed orchestra, to an ad hoc group, like a school choir or band. Or it could be a commission with strict time constraints such as a TV or radio advertisement, or a symphonic piece of work. This module will give you the tools to tackle these real-life musical challenges.

This module looks at the key skills and abilities required for entrepreneurs to develop new business ideas in the creative industries. As new technologies and media converge, the need to understand how new concepts are generated is one of the key tools for contemporary and future creative industry practitioners. Generating successful business ideas is a process of creative thinking and a critical awareness of the business landscape.

This module will focus on both the theoretical and practical aspects of initiating and developing a creative enterprise in the modern marketplace. A study of entrepreneurial traits provides the framework for the module, which includes the development of a credible business idea and the presentation of a formulated and considered business plan.

This module aims to develop your critical understanding of the challenges behind solo and ensemble performance through the lens of performance psychology. By understanding the roots of today's performance culture in historical, social and cultural contexts, you will work at developing and enhancing your own effective solo and ensemble live and recorded performance strategies. 

This module investigates the ways in which topics in music history have been constructed in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. You will explore specific musical works alongside musicological responses. These works will be discussed in the context of culture and cultural transfer, race and ethnicity, musical analysis, gender, psychoanalysis, listening, music and the body, music and exoticism, film music, music and religion/spirituality, jazz studies, and music technology and recorded history.

Research suggests that the majority of musicians earn a significant proportion of their income through teaching and, therefore, knowledge and experience should be considered an important addition to the skill-set. This module provides an excellent opportunity for you to test your potential as a music educator. We intend to give you a flavour of working in education, researching into pedagogical ideas and equipping you with valuable skills that are transferable to your career.

The aim of the module is to foster the skills needed to become a dynamic, creative and engaging team-player, demonstrating leadership and problem-solving qualities as well as an independent, empathic and reflective musician. This module aims to consolidate the range of skills needed for you to engage with the creative industries as an expert and versatile performer. 

This module provides you with the experience of undertaking a detailed investigation into a well-defined area of musical knowledge and/or practice, which you will choose yourself. The balance of text and other materials is to be negotiated with the module leader. The resultant dissertation or project may be entirely written text (dissertation) or could take the shape of a combination of written material and performance material such as, for example, a lecture recital. 

This module is designed to develop the level of personal entrepreneurial skills needed by a current day portfolio career musician. You will examine and investigate current social and consumer trends of the creative industries and learn how to interact with and reflect this in your commercial and entrepreneurial skills.

This module aims to bring together the business, performance, and academic skills which you have been developing and linking across different module strands on your course. The Performance Project module prepares you to put on a performance event through the development of a personal, creative, innovative and collaborative performance project which showcases your vocational instrumental or vocal talents.

You will develop your wider collaborative and leadership skills which you will draw upon during your professional career. You will develop a mentoring role to support your peers in a variety of ensemble performance contexts such as orchestra, opera, big band, musical theatre etc, as well as multimedia, collaborative and cross-genre projects. You will acquire conducting and workshop leading skills and gain insights into diverse professional contexts.