Creative Music Technology

Our Creative Music Technology degree gives you the opportunity to work and learn with students who share your commitment to music technology. You’ll explore and harness personal creative outcomes, while developing innovative approaches to your work.

The teaching team have very high levels of specialist professional practice and expertise. You’ll have access to superb resources and facilities, and benefit from being part of a vibrant community of students and staff, creating exciting work and collaborating across subject boundaries.

Year one
We encourage you to explore and grow your existing creative activities alongside important foundational practical and interpretive skills. This is supported in topics such as audio recording and production, sound design, critical listening, and the exploration of the relationship between music and sound to picture.

Year two
Youl take your skills and creativity into the professional arena, with a series of industry guest lectures, and the opportunity to engage with external collaboration, an internship or an industry placement. You’re guided toward greater technical competence in the core areas of sound production, critical listening and sound design. We also introduce multimedia skills that will open the opportunity of creative multidisciplinary projects and support the creation of powerful self-marketing and promotional tools.

Year three
The final year of the degree offers industry level optional pathways including the areas of Advanced Music Production, Game Audio, Sonic Performance, Visual Music, Audio Post Production, and Composition for Media, from which you can select a specialised route to support your creative and professional aspirations.

This combines with individual support in managing a larger scale creative project of your choice, which we offer as an alternative to a traditional dissertation. All of the assignments in this final year are designed to be the foundation of your professional portfolio, and many are submitted as public facing online content.

Over 90% of assessment is through coursework, with the majority of assignments aiming to develop your professional portfolio. We're also committed to developing your written communication skills, as a way of empowering you to discuss your own work and the work of others. Tutors are always available to support assignments and particular assessment style preferences if needed.

You’ll receive a combination of lectures, music lab workshops, large and small group seminars, individual tutorials, online delivery and self directed study. The majority of taught sessions are in specialised spaces such as music studios and fully equipped computer labs.

To find out more about how we teach and how you'll learn, please read our Learning and Teaching Delivery Statement.

As part of your degree, you could study abroad on a placement at one of Bath Spa’s partner universities.

You gain insight from an array of industry and creative guests. For example, in year two you’ll be able to attend our Think Tank lecture series of industry professionals at the top of their respective fields, and in the final year, we run a two day Q and A series with Game Audio professionals from all over the world via Skype.

Example professional destinations of previous graduates include:

• Audio Production
• Artist Producer
• Composition
• Sound design
• Game Audio
• Audio Post Production
• Performance in sound/AV
• Teaching / Education
• Audio/mix engineer
• Sound recording / Foley artist.

If you’re a full-time undergraduate student starting your first year at Bath Spa University, you can apply for the Certificate in Global Citizenship, which you’ll study alongside your degree.

You’ll gain global awareness and add an international dimension to your student experience, and funding is available. On successful completion of the programme, you’ll be awarded a Certificate in Global Citizenship. This is in addition to your degree; it doesn’t change your degree title or results.

This optional placement year provides you with the opportunity to identify, apply for and secure professional experience, normally comprising one to three placements over a minimum of nine months. Successful completion of this module will demonstrate your ability to secure and sustain graduate-level employment.

By completing the module, you'll be entitled to the addition of 'with Professional Placement Year' to your degree title.

Before your Professional Placement Year, you'll work to secure your placement, constructing a development plan with your module leader and your placement coordinator from our Careers and Employability team.

On your return to University for your final year, you'll submit your Placement Portfolio, detailing your development on your placement.

Creative Music Technology is taught at our Newton Park campus. You'll have access to excellent music technology facilities including:

• ProTools HD recording studios
• Mixing Suites
• Apple Mac labs

As a Creative Music Technology student, you'll also make use of other facilities, including:

• Commons building
• our Virtual Learning Environment
• Newton Park library

Our course facilities are specified, calibrated, and maintained to industry standards. You’ll have access to a full range of hardware and software to support the curriculum content including ProTools, Logic Audio Pro, Ableton Live, Max/MSP, and numerous plug-ins and processing software including Waves bundles, Native Instrument suites, GRM tools, Lexicon reverbs, MacDSP, and surround sound encoders. We have a growing array of hardware modular synth components and we also support visual and media based work with a full range of multimedia software.

You’ll be able to use a comprehensive equipment loan system with everything that you might need for extended project work, including an array of microphones and pre amps, specialist field recorder equipment, portable high specification monitors, and professional still and movie cameras with lighting.

Software and the technology of music making and production is in a constant state of development; our approach is to equip you with transferable techniques, artistic approaches, and working practices that will continue to evolve and keep you ahead of your game throughout your career.