Creative Music Production MA drafted
| Program start date | Application deadline |
| 2023-09-01 | - |
Program Overview
About the course
Reasons to study
This course aims to enable producer and musicians to fully integrate studio technology with musical outcomes. We strive to develop both your technical and creative potential underpinning this with scholarly insights into production and the studio as a creative, artistic tool.
This Masters level course is designed for both music and music technology graduates, but also for learners from industry or practitioner backgrounds who are looking to develop their musical and technical skills and knowledge, allowing everyone to explore new ways of engaging with Creative Music Production.
Our aim is to combine the essential qualities of musician and producer to deliver post graduates who are adaptable, creative and not afraid to push the boundaries of studio practice in the pursuit of innovative artistic goals.
Music and Music Technology at the University of Huddersfield has an international reputation, and hosts one of the largest postgraduate music communities in the UK. You will benefit from our regular research seminars and workshops, and will be a member of the Centre for Music, Culture and Identity which provides a focus for popular music research in the department. CMCI maintains strong connections with other research centres, including CeReNeM and ReCePP, whose members include performers, composers and technology researchers across wide stylistic contexts.
Program Outline
Course detail
Modules
Researching Music
On this module you will be introduced to a range of significant and contemporary scholarship relating to the study of music. You will learn about diverse approaches to music research, and receive training in managing research professionally and ethically. Central to the module is the development of research skills appropriate to postgraduate level work and to your own research interests.
Advanced Desktop Music Production
On this module you will professionalise your DAW techniques. Focusing on modern approaches to music production, the module will deepen your skills in sound design using original synthesis and sampling as well as recording in a digital environment. The module involves multi-software workflows, the expressive use of hardware controllers and hybrid techniques combining digital and analogue processing.
Spatial Audio Production and Analysis
The module is designed to provide you with systematic understanding on both theoretical and practical sides of spatial audio recording and reproduction. The module will start with introducing the psychoacoustic principles of auditory spatial perception, followed by exploring various spatial audio recording and processing techniques, such as microphone arrays, panning and binaural audio synthesis techniques. You’ll learn how to design a microphone technique to capture desired spatial sound in an acoustic environment based on psychoacoustic principles. You’ll also develop critical listening skills as well as objective analysis techniques for spatial audio quality evaluation.
Creativity in the Studio
This module investigates the studio as a creative tool and its relationship to your practice as a songwriter, performer, composer or producer. Practical workshop sessions will provide a basis for developing your own bespoke workflow or performance setup which you will then use to realise a piece of compositional, performance or production work.
Group Project
You will work in a small group of students to devise, manage and realise a practice-based creative project that is relevant to using the studio and/or other music technology and may include a live event or performance. Roles will be clearly allocated to group members with a collaborative approach to the project design and final assignment.
Creative Production Project
On this module, you undertake a substantial independent creative production project. You can undertake work in any area of creative music production that interests you and guidance will be available through staff supervision. Examples of the kinds of projects that would be relevant are an EP/album length production of one or more artists, a collection of your own songwriting or compositional work, a substantial live production (or portfolio of live work) from either mixing or performance perspectives, or a set of music videos (of your own creative work or that of others).
Teaching and assessment
The course is mainly taught through on-site lectures, tutorials, workshops and directed research and practical work. In addition, you will attend regular seminars featuring guest and local speakers about a range of research topics and activities that will provide you with good models and cause for further explorations in your studies. These are part of our wider research activity and you will benefit from being a part of the active research community at Huddersfield.
Assessment methods reflect the practical nature of the course and reinforce the ability to apply knowledge and skills directly linked to project work and creative outcomes. Your module specification, course handbook and virtual learning environment will provide full details of the assessment criteria applying to your studies. Assessment will include coursework, presentations, vlogs and peer review. All your work is moderated, subject to second marking and external examining.
Huddersfield is the UK's only university where 100% of the permanent teaching staff are fellows of the Higher Education Academy.*
*permanent staff, after probation: some recently appointed colleagues will only obtain recognition in the months after their arrival in Huddersfield, once they have started teaching.
Teaching excellence
-
Triple proof of teaching excellence: our staff rank in the top three in England for the proportion who hold doctorates, who have higher degrees, and hold teaching qualifications (HESA 2022). So, you’ll learn from some of the best, helping you to be the best.
-
We are joint first in the country for National Teaching Fellowships, which mark the UK’s best lecturers in Higher Education, winning a total of 20 since 2008 (2022 data).
-
We won the first Global Teaching Excellence Award, recognising the University’s commitment to world-class teaching and its success in developing students as independent learners and critical thinkers (Higher Education Academy, 2017).
You will take 180 credits at Master’s level, made up of six modules, of which two are project-based. A further module focussing on Desktop Music Production and one optional choice of either spatial audio or advanced mixing.