Program Overview

The course has been designed so you can align your studies with your passion in music and graduate with a degree that represents your interests and skills. With a wide range of optional modules leading to named degree pathways, you can graduate with any of the following titles:

Join our friendly and supportive international community based at our North London campus. Collaborate with students from other creative courses, including Dance, Theatre, Animation, TV Production, Art, Fashion and Games Design and make the most of our state-of-the-art facilities and equipment, including an industry standard recording and mixing studio, concert grand pianos, sound insulated practice rooms, computer suites and access to a wide range of software, such as Ableton, ProTools, Logic, Max MSP, Melodyne; hybrid analogue/digital recording studio and modular synths.

You will be taught by leading industry professionals of national and international standing. Gain key industry links to the music world with regular visiting guest speakers and master-classes from leading practitioners and music industry managers and the opportunity to work with a range of artists and professors in residence including the Firebird Orchestra, Allegri String Quartet, Daniel Miller, Founder of Mute Records and Grammy award winning producer Alan Branch.

Learn more about the course and last year’s graduates on our Creative Graduates 2022 exhibition site.

We are regularly reviewing and updating our programmes to ensure you have the best learning experience. We are taking what we have learnt during the pandemic and enhancing our teaching methods with new and innovative ways of learning.

We aim to model a wide range of teaching strategies and approaches on the course which you can adapt to your own setting.

You will be taught through a combination of lectures, workshops, seminars, tutorials, instrumental lessons (according to music specialization), opportunities for collaborative projects and concert performances. Lectures allow you to gain and develop knowledge in specific subjects. You can discuss and develop your understanding of topics covered in lectures and practicals in smaller seminar groups usually made up of 7-12 students or so. Tutorials enable students to go over their own work individually with a music specialist, thus helping you to develop your individual voice as a musician. In addition, you can arrange one-to-one sessions with your personal tutor or module leader. You will also have access to and use resources to support your learning throughout your course. These include: a suite of Macintosh computers loaded with Logic Pro digital audio workstations, Sibelius music notation software and other softwares for sound generation and processing; printing facilities; access to a hybrid analogue-digital recording studio connected digitally with sound-proofed practice rooms and live recording spaces; a library open 24/7 well-stocked with music scores, books, CDs and online portals to the latest music research; free access to the complete Naxos Music Library online; a Graduate Academic Assistant and Student Learning Assistants to support you in your studies; a concert room and communal spaces to meet students specialising in other disciplines which need music (e.g. film, animation and television production).

During your first year (Level 4), your weekly timetable will typically consist of 90-minute lectures for four modules, including those in music history, performance and composition projects, harmony with musicianship and music technology and production. Included either as part of or alongside these, are related tutorials and practical sessions in composition and performance, keyboard skills classes, university choir, an optional specialist singers’ ensemble and opportunities to collaborate with other music students outside of timetabled course delivery.

When not attending your teaching, sessions mentioned above, you will be expected to continue learning independently through self-study. Typically, this will involve reading journal articles and books, working on projects, undertaking research, and preparing for assessments including coursework, presentations and examinations. Your independent learning is supported by the facilities available including the library and Study Hub, Laptop hire, and online materials in MyUniHub (see student support section below).

Your overall workload will include the activities listed above, and with each credit being completed equating to 10 hours of study time (you will complete 120 credits per level of study, which are broken down into modules of typically 30 credits). While your actual hours may depend on the optional module that you choose (if available), the following information will give you an indication of how much time is allocated to teaching and independent study on your course:

Level 4

18% of your time is spent in timetabled Teaching and learning - typical structure activity:

Level 5

15% of your time is spent in timetabled Teaching and learning - typical structure activity:

Level 6

17% of your time is spent in timetabled Teaching and learning - typical structure activity:

The course will provide you with opportunities to test your knowledge and understanding informally through ‘formative’ assessment. This will be completed before your ‘summative’ assessment which will count towards your final grade. Each module normally contains at least one piece of formative assessment from which you will receive feedback from your tutor. Formative assessments are developmental and any grade you receive from formative assessment does not count towards your final marks.

There is a ‘summative’ assessment as part of the module, usually towards the end of the module. Assessment methods could include essays (with support available for the writing of these), building research logs in the form of an online ‘wiki’, live performances in ensembles and solo, original composition(s), recordings and live performance of electronic music, music theory tests, or music pastiche exercises to begin to train you in the imitation of earlier music styles. The grades from the summative assessments count towards your module mark. Assessments are reviewed annually and may be updated based on student feedback, to suit content or based on feedback from an external examiner.

The balance of assessment will depend on the modules that you complete throughout your course. The approximate percentage of the course which is assessed by coursework is outlined below: