Industry Practice

Building on Industry Foundations, this module focuses on professional development, including valuing your work and developing an understanding of contracts, rights management, and how to generate sustainable income long-term.

Songwriting: Concepts & Narrative

Explore storytelling, symbolism, and structure to craft emotionally powerful songs that connect with audiences. One-to-one coaching supports bold, expressive songwriting shaped for today’s music and media landscapes.

Creative Research Practice

Explore how research can inform and expand your work as a songwriter. You’ll investigate areas that inspire your practice, from music culture to genre, technology or technique, while developing skills in critical thinking, project planning and reflective analysis that will support your final year portfolio and innovation work.

Performance, Persona & Stagecraft

Develop your live performance skills and artistic identity by exploring repertoire, staging, and style. Through workshops and showcases, you’ll build confidence, stage presence, and deliver compelling, authentic performances.

Advanced Music Production

This module builds on the Music Production module, further refining your creative and technical approach to music production and experimenting with unconventional creative approaches. You will explore advanced techniques in composition, arrangement, sound design, synthesis, and audio processing.

Scoring & Arranging

Explore scoring and arranging through hands-on composition using both acoustic and digital tools. Learn to shape emotion and narrative with harmony, texture, and instrumentation for songs and screen.

Hardware Production

Explore hardware-based music production tools and setups, including synthesisers, drum machines, samplers, modular systems, guitar pedals, vocal processors, and drum triggers, developing a hands-on approach to sound creation and production.

Integrative Performance Technologies

Explore how tools like loop stations, vocal processors, MIDI controllers, and reactive visuals can enhance live performance. You’ll experiment with tech that suits your style, designing bold, expressive shows that reflect your artistic goals and push the boundaries of what live performance can be.

Commercial Music Creation

Create music for commercial use, learning the professional requirements for sync licensing, branded content and production libraries and exploring the roles of producers, songwriters, composers, and writers in different contexts.

Marketing & Promotion

Explore the principles, tools and strategies of marketing and promotion within the music industry, including social media, digital distribution, content creation, how to communicate your message and build a presence.

Immersive Audio

Discover the creative world of immersive audio, focusing on mixing and mastering in Dolby Atmos. Explore core principles of immersive sound, including object-based mixing, multichannel signal flow and spatial processing.

Music Education & Wellbeing Practice

Investigate how music can be used in educational, therapeutic and community settings as you explore its role in supporting learning, wellbeing and social connection.

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Signature System Design

Create a personalised technical system that supports your creative and professional trajectory, such as a custom production workflow, a sample instrument, an audio plug-in or a seamless live rig for performance.

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Management & Leadership in the Music Industry

This module will build your confidence, knowledge and adaptability to succeed in complex industry environments; equipping you with the professional skills needed to lead, manage and innovate in the industry.

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Collaborative Creative Practice

Design, develop and deliver an original creative project in collaboration with others. You will refine your creative identity while you contribute to a shared artistic vision.

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Innovation: Exploration

This is the beginning of your final-year innovation journey where you will challenge the conventions of your creative discipline and build on the technical, creative and research skills developed throughout your degree.

Industry Portfolio Development

Plan, shape and build a professional portfolio that reflects your creative identity, strengths, and long-term goals, researching professional expectations, exploring formats and creating a strategy tailored to your sector.

Innovation: Realisation

Realise the work completed during the Innovation: Exploration module, bringing together your technical, creative, and research skills and taking your initial idea through to a completed outcome.

Industry Portfolio Delivery

Building on the Industry Portfolio Development module, you will finalise a body of work that aligns with your professional goals and presents your skills clearly to your intended audience.

Sound Cultures

This module invites you to critically explore the cultural, social, and political dimensions of sound and music, applying research methodologies explored in Creative Research Practice.

Learning is practical, collaborative, and artist-led. You’ll spend time in studios, rehearsal spaces, and production environments, developing your ideas through workshops, technical sessions, and one-to-one tutorials.

Songwriting and performance development is embedded in your experience, supported by creative production training that helps you bring your songs to life. You’ll learn how to write, produce, and perform your work with intention, building confidence in your artistic identity.

You’ll collaborate with students across other music degrees, working with producers, performers, composers, DJs, and sound designers on projects that mirror real industry practice. You’ll also have the chance to participate in student-led showcases, events, and live opportunities, working alongside event managers and live sound students to share your music with real audiences.

Ongoing feedback from tutors and peers supports your creative growth, with a strong focus on experimentation, reflection, and professional development.

On average you should allow for between 40-50 hours per week for your studies, of which approximately 25% will be taught (c.10 hours) and 75% will be self-study.