Popular Music (Joint Honours)

Three years full-time or flexible part-time.

The symbiotic relationship between theory and performance provides an integrated degree that studies popular music's role within contemporary culture while enhancing musicianship, studio skills and industrial practice.

The course will consider popular music from a number of theoretical angles throughout all three stages. It has a hands-on, practice element enabling students to develop their creative skills in composition/song-writing and cultivate their general musicianship. Students will be introduced to the application of contemporary music technologies and hone performance and production skills.

Stage one

In the first stage, students will be introduced to the expanding field of popular music theory, allowing them to understand the ways in which popular music permeates our culture and engages with us as individuals. Students will develop their practical musical skills and gain a detailed understanding of musical theory. Moreover, students will be introduced to the workings of the digital recording studio. Other available modules will provide an historic account of the development of musical forms, industrial practice and technological developments.

Stage two

The second stage of the degree provides students with the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art digital technology as a compositional tool, while studying the effect of digitalisation on the way in which the music industry operates in a constantly changing global environment, as well as the impact digitalisation has had on the ways in which we create and listen to music. Throughout this stage, students will be developing their musical skills in performance and composition. Other modules will explore the relationship between popular music and language, identity and music theory.

Stage three

In the final stage, alongside the self-directed professional project, students will study modules that engage with the future of the digital music industry, popular music and politics and avantgarde practices in mainstream pop.

• Introduces students to a critical engagement with popular music
• Fosters musicianship and studio craft
• Develops performance skills
• Explores the music industry in the digital age

• Avant Pop: Experiments in Modern Music
• Creative Digital
• Creative Musicianship
• Music and Identity
• Professional project
• Sound Recording and Production
• Techniques of Musical Language
• Radio
• Understanding Popular Music

Assessment includes practical project work, seminar presentations and essays, as well as examinations. Final year performance assessments take place in a public venue in Northampton in front of a live audience.

The BA Popular Music course is supported by a fully ProTools HD enabled recording studio. Students also have access to three digital audio workstation suites and two live rehearsal rooms.

Study is achieved through lectures, seminars, workshops and practice sessions.

Students completing the BA (Hons) Popular Music degree will be well equipped to enter into a range of professions within the music and wider entertainment industries, whether as performers, producers, writers, critics or in the teaching profession itself.