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.

Creative Technical Development

Advance your creative and technical abilities as a contemporary performer or vocalist as you explore new performance techniques, technologies and stylistic approaches.

Creative Research Practice

Explore how research can inform and expand your work as an artist. 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.

Composition & Arrangement

Develop your skills in songwriting, composition, and arrangement, exploring melody, harmony, and lyrical structure. Collaborate with peers to craft expressive, genre-spanning music that enhances storytelling and showcases your artistic voice.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Learning is hands-on and experience-led. You’ll spend time in studios, rehearsal rooms, and performance spaces, developing your skills through practical workshops, production sessions, and one-to-one tutorials.

Instrumental tuition is central to your experience, offering personalised support to help you grow as a vocalist and creative artist. This is complemented by group sessions in musicianship, vocal technique, performance skills, and production workflows, helping you build confidence, versatility, and technical fluency.

You’ll collaborate with students across other music degrees, working on cross-disciplinary projects with producers, musicians, songwriters, DJs, and composers that reflect how the music industry operates. As part of the wider dBs creative community, you’ll also have the opportunity to take part in student-led performances and events, working with event managers and live sound students to bring your music to life in real-world settings. These experiences are optional but highly encouraged and can be a valuable part of building your confidence, network, and portfolio.

Ongoing feedback from tutors and peers supports your growth, with a strong emphasis on experimentation, reflection, and shaping your own sound and artistic identity.

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