Music

Starting with your own interests as a musician, the course develops your core skills and gives you ways to apply them in practical employment contexts including education, community music, health and wellbeing, and arts management. The course focuses on developing your artistic practice, as well as helping you learn new skills in areas such as:

• Performance, improvisation and ensemble musicianship
• Composition, arrangement and music for media
• Recording, documenting and music production
• Blogging, podcasting and online media
• Music teaching, workshop leading and social engagement
• Event management, marketing and creative entrepreneurship

Develop key professional skills and an impressive CV of evidence and experience that appeals to employers, preparing you for a range of different careers in the music industry.

Year one
Focus on developing and refining your core practical musicianship skills. Through this practical work, you’ll learn about current music in relation to societal contexts, exploring the areas in which your practice can make a difference in people’s lives. You'll also develop your ability to make recordings and videos, learning to edit these for online contexts. Across the year, you’ll undertake a series of short projects, working in groups as well as individually.

Year two
Apply your skills within a series of industry contexts, helping you to understand what careers are available to you as a musician. You'll continue to develop your artistic practice, while considering how external factors such as collaborating with others or undertaking research can open up new ideas. This work is also explored through working with communities, in educational settings, and producing events. You'll also develop your ability to communicate ideas about music in different media, such as podcasts, video creation, and social media.

Year three
In your final year, you’ll be supported in transitioning to work as an independent industry professional. You’ll design and deliver projects in areas such as education, community music, health and wellbeing, and arts management. You’ll be able to focus on your individual career aspirations as a professional musician, and build the CV you need to get you there, supported by placement opportunities. You'll work on two large-scale projects of your choice, focusing on your creative practice and applied research. We help you plan and manage these projects, balancing creative, research and entrepreneurial decision-making to reach your goals. You'll also gain valuable industry experience through a work placement, helping you to demonstrate your potential to employers.

This is a practical course and its teaching is delivered through a mix of workshops and rehearsals, seminars and lectures, alongside tutorial support. We provide regular sessions with visiting professionals which offer key industry insight. You’ll work with our team of industry professionals, both within music and from other disciplines.

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

All of our assessments are based in practical and applied music-making. In addition to the creative work you make through performances and compositions, you’ll create outputs such as audio-visual documentation, podcasts, websites, written reports and research papers, teaching materials, project proposals and public events.

As a result, your assessment projects will form a portfolio that can be used to evidence your skills to employers, as part of a showreel or CV.

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.

The course is taught at our Newton Park campus, based in the Michael Tippett Centre, which houses a purpose-built concert hall, performance spaces, practice rooms, and recording studios.

Music students also have access to the campus’s wider arts facilities, including numerous electronic music studios, university theatre, and industry-spec TV studio.

• A purpose-built concert hall with Steinway D grand piano
• Seventeen practice rooms, including a drum room and four with electronically-variable acoustics
• Five recording studios
• Two multi-computer Mac labs with industry-standard software including Sibelius, Logic Audio Pro, Ableton Live, ProTools, and Max/MSP
• University Asset Store offering free access to industry-spec audio-visual equipment for use on and off-campus
• A large collection of acoustic and electric instruments, including five grand pianos, orchestral percussion instruments, early music instruments and a full Javanese gamelan
• A substantial music library of scores and recordings, and a wide range of online music resources.

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

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.