Music

On this course, you’ll have regular music-making opportunities and be able to explore your personal musical identity through making original work. You’ll develop your creative skills as a practitioner in a wide range of musical styles and contexts.  

BA Music aims to provide you with access to a broad range of careers in music. You’ll undertake practical training and work experience and take music beyond concert venues and into schools, community organisations, health and social care settings and musical societies.  

You'll also develop a portfolio of tangible experience and materials that you can use to demonstrate your skills to employers, such as:

• public-facing performances
• websites and digital content
• educational materials such as workshop plans.

Year one
In your first year, our focus is almost exclusively on developing your musical skills: singing or playing on stage, creating your own music, and understanding the wider musical world.

During practical musicianship workshops, you’ll try new instruments, sing in choirs or join ensembles. Through this practical work, you’ll learn about music in relation to what’s going on in society and explore the ways your music can make a difference in people’s lives.

You’ll create a portfolio of your performances that showcases your skills as an artist. In the process, you’ll develop your ability to make recordings and videos and edit these for online contexts.

Year two
In your second year, you’ll continue to develop your practical music-making skills while considering how external factors such as collaborating with others or undertaking research can generate new ideas for your music.

Core modules focus on making music accessible to all and using it as a means of communication. Optional modules allow you to enhance your research or event planning abilities.

You'll also develop your ability to communicate ideas about music using different media, such as podcasts, video and social media.

Year three
This year is all about you, your musical interests and who you are as a musical entrepreneur.

You’ll get the chance to run a range of large-scale projects in areas that you choose, such as education, community music, wellbeing, and arts management. 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 short, observational work placement, helping you to transition to the professional world and demonstrate your skills to potential employers.

Workshops are instruments-out: you’ll make music, experiment with unfamiliar instruments, solve problems and complete creative tasks.

Regular rehearsals and tutorials with our teaching staff help you develop specific passages of music that you’re working on and take your music in different directions.

We provide regular sessions with visiting professionals, who offer key industry insights.

You’ll also explore current issues in music through seminar discussions, some of which operate in a flipped classroom model, where you and your fellow students lead the discussion with support and moderation from your tutors.

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

Practical music-making forms the basis of most assessments. You may create compositions, performances, audio-visual documentation, podcasts, websites, written reports, research papers, teaching materials, project proposals, and events.

As a result, you'll form a portfolio of assessments that can demonstrate your skills to employers, as part of a showreel or CV.

We’ll teach you at our Newton Park campus, in the Michael Tippett Centre, which contains 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
• 17 practice rooms, including a drum room and four with electronically variable acoustics
• Five recording studios
• Two multi-computer Mac labs with industry-standard software
• 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.

This degree in Music prepares you for various careers. You could become a performer, manager, educator or leader in the community music and wellbeing sectors.

Our Music graduates have gone on to work in film and TV and music management. Others have set up community arts organisations. Some have (after additional study and qualification) set up music therapy practices and taught at primary and secondary level.

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.