Our degree, taught by dedicated tutors, will enhance your technical ability, build your knowledge of the industry, and give you the confidence and contacts to succeed.
BA Popular Music is an exciting degree programme for those seeking a career in music in the 21st century. The course is focused on three key areas: popular music practice, popular music business, and popular music studies. The practical work develops expertise in songwriting, musicianship, performance, and production. The business modules provide students with a thorough knowledge of the music industries, as well as the entrepreneurial skills required to gain employment in the industries or to self-release their music.
Through the academic study of popular music, students gain know-how in the history of the music and learn how to analyse contemporary developments. These three areas of the course provide students with a wide array of career options, within the music industries and beyond. If you want to be successful when it comes to making music, making money out of music, and making sense of popular music, then this degree is for you.
This module provides an overview of the music industries, principally in the sectors of recording, publishing, live music and management. You will develop your understanding of related roles (A&R, marketers, managers, publishers, agents, promoters and administrators) to gain a broad-based understanding of contemporary issues and practices.
This module develops your knowledge of the musical and lyrical characteristics of popular music genres in order to create a firm foundation for further study and to inform your practice as musicians and songwriters. The porous nature of genres will be covered, alongside style, repertoire and interpretation. You will develop the ability to work effectively as part of a team, which is crucial to working within the profession as well as a core transferable skill, performance, musicianship and critical listening, and the ability to analyse and reflect upon your own practice.
This module introduces a range of fundamental musical concepts and skills. You will learn to "think in sound," which is an essential ability in the development of effective and rewarding practical musicianship. You will also explore techniques and procedures in digital and acoustic audio environments, allowing you to integrate such tools into you own practices.
This module enables you to acquire an understanding of the historical, cultural, social, economic, technological and aesthetic trends that shaped developments in popular music in the 20th century, gain knowledge of the ways that popular music was performed and heard during the 20th century, and develop an understanding of approaches to popular music's history.
This module appraises recent and current trends in popular music and identifies related concepts for you to explore and evaluate. The module's relatively narrow time-frame enables detailed investigation of such concepts, which will necessarily be updated annually but will include discussion of new genres, economics, technology and cultural developments. As well as encouraging you to investigate musical practice in order to develop written work, this module encourages you to use theory to produce practical work.
This module explores the key principles of music journalism and develops practical skills in interviewing and writing reviews, features, biographies, website content and promotional material. You will also explore the history of music journalism and its possible future. As well as considering a career in music journalism, either full-time or part of a portfolio career, the module will appeal to those who would like a greater understanding of working with the press from an artist's perspective.
This module develops your knowledge of the music industries, with a specific focus on entrepreneurship. Such issues are particularly important to those intending to launch a company of your own, or to self-manage and/or self-release, but will also be relevant to those intending to work for an existing company – within the music industries or beyond. You will work on a live case study of a music business, as well as planning your own music-related business, working both autonomously and in groups.
This module develops a practical understanding of musicianship and performance. You will take both leading and supportive musical roles within an ensemble, and will also develop solo performance skills. Vocal and/or instrumental technique is developed, alongside a practical understanding of style, performance, aural skills and harmonic vocabulary.
This module develops expertise in music production theories and practices. You will learn to understand clearly and use confidently advanced techniques and procedures in digital and analogue musical environments and adapt these to achieve desired creative results. You will also explore the critical study of music production and establish a strong sense of its artistic and historical contexts, drawing from this knowledge to inform and enhance your own practice.
This module develops your skills in practical song composition and is informed by theoretical perspectives. You will develop your critical faculties through aural analysis and practical skills exercises in a variety of styles and genres. Tasks involving various compositional processes (including working to specific briefs) will build technique and stylistic sensitivity, providing a firm foundation for the development of a more distinctive personal voice.
This module provides an advanced idea of popular music studies through a selective overview of theoretical approaches, including cultural theory, sociology, political economy and musicology. Key areas of popular music studies will be addressed, including production, mediation and reception. Theory will be used to explore popular music practice and popular music practice will be used to explore popular music theory.
This module cultivates to a sophisticated level an understanding of the history of film music, particularly of the West, and the aesthetic concerns which can be brought to bear in composing music for screen. It is also designed to test the ability to compose appropriate music for media productions with effectiveness and relative speed. You will be introduced to contractual aspects of media music composition.
This module develops core practical skills to the point at which you can demonstrate excellence in both style and technique as performers of popular music. The module covers advanced aspects of musicianship, including transposition, chromaticism and extended harmony, chord substitution and appropriate modes. You will attempt to develop an individual soloing voice, and to direct an ensemble.
This module enhances your existing command of songwriting craft and styles by facilitating the development of a more individual and professional approach to practical song composition. You will be encouraged to establish and maintain a distinctive musical identity - a personal creative 'voice' - that will inform present and future songwriting. You will be willing to experiment and to expand the boundaries of popular music.
This module allows you the opportunity to gain further knowledge, understanding, and expertise in recording and producing music by pursuing and realising a self-developed project. Subject to approval by the module leader, you will undertake work that constitutes an adequate technical and artistic challenge. You are encouraged to find creative solutions to problems and achieve a highly personal and successful vision.
This module furthers knowledge, understanding and skills in a particular area of interest, whether arising from prior learning or enabling the pursuit of interests not other otherwise catered for in taught modules. Because of the diversity of Independent Projects, the specific aims will vary according to the nature of the project.
This module enables you to affect positively the musical development of a community or individual(s). This will be achieved through the planning and delivery of participatory musical activity within a specific community-based or pedagogical context. To this end, both practical facilitation techniques and theoretical literature will be explored.
This module aims to provide an advanced knowledge of contractual and intellectual property issues relevant for a career in the music industries. You will gain a sophisticated understanding of the use, development and consequences of legal practices in the recording, publishing and live music sectors. This knowledge will be applied in an entrepreneurial context as you develop your own music-related businesses.
You can find more information about this course in the programme specification. Module and programme information is indicative and may be subject to change.
As a graduate you will possess transferable skills that cut across various sectors of the music and cultural industries. The career options with a Popular Music degree are exciting and diverse. They include songwriting and performance, production, music marketing and promotion, copyright, music publishing, music journalism, arts administration and management, events management, education, training and music research.
Richard is the author of Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record (Ashgate, 2012). Prior to becoming a lecturer he worked in record shops, held various posts at PRS for Music and co-managed a pub. He has performed in bands based in Evesham, Cheltenham and London.
Pop Bothering Me - blog
Formerly a session musicians with Passenger, Marcus O’Dair has released three acclaimed albums and toured Europe as one half of Grasscut. He has written for publications including the Guardian, the Independent, The Times, the Financial Times, the Irish Times, the Wire, Uncut and City Metric (New Statesman), and appeared on CNN, BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 3, BBC 6 Music and the BBC World Service. Different Every Time, his 2014 biography of Robert Wyatt, was a Radio 4 book of the week and was shortlisted for the Penderyn music book prize. He is the convenor of the Blockchain for Creative Industries research and teaching cluster.
Fiorenzo’s teaching focuses in particular on the intersections between identities and politics in music and especially how gendered identities can be reinforced, challenged, and re-imagined in song; thus topics like feminism, queer theory, masculinities and transgender studies are all explored. His research is concerned with musical instruments and specifically how their fundamental importance in music can be understood through new theoretical frameworks that pertain to a “critical” organology.
Sam's popular music performance credentials include having performed with Keavy and Edele (B*witched), Lucinda Belle, and Aubrey Logan (of Postmodern Jukebox). He has taught at H.E. institutions including Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Cambridge Universit, and Trinity Laban. He is also a nationally well-known Jazz musician, often hosting the late shows at Ronnie Scotts Jazz Club in Soho. His album Aquarium was listed as one of MOJO magazine's top 10 international releases of 2011. Outside of his profession as a musician he is undertaking a part-time PhD in Music Cognition at Cambridge University where he is investigating the possibility that Absolute Pitch might be learnable by adults.
As an electronic artist, Dave has worked for some of the UK’s most prestigious EDM record labels including Fabric, Low Pressings, Mute and many others. He now works as a freelance recording and mixing engineer in London. As well as teaching studio craft and audio manipulation at Middlesex, Dave’s particular specialisms are in performance audio tools such as Max/MSP and PureData. He is the university’s accredited expert for Sibelius scoring software.
Start: October 2018, EU/International induction: September 2018
Duration: 3 years full-time, 4 to 6 years part-time
Code: W3N2
Start: October 2018, EU/International induction: September 2018
Duration: 3 years full-time, Usually 5 years part-time
Code: W301
Start: October 2018, EU/International induction: September 2018
Duration: 3 years full-time, Usually 5 years part-time
Code: W340