Module Catalogue 2025/26

Pre Requisite Comment

Students wishing to take this module should contact the module leader in advance with a short written rationale for why they wish to do so, including - for non-music or combined honours students - any relevant experience

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

To explore creative ways of making music/sound art through practical engagement with a range of methods and approaches selected from a plurality of repertoires.

To facilitate understanding of recent trends in contemporary and experimental musics including online music making and broadcasting.

To encourage and develop individual and group creativity.

To promote active engagement with a variety of recent creative approaches and styles.

To lay the foundations for further study in experimental musics, informed by creative practices in the last century up to the present day.

Outline Of Syllabus

This module will help you engage with a range of current techniques of music making, and will combining theoretical understanding with practical application and an appreciation of contemporary repertoire from a range of more-or-less experimental approaches. Each lecture will introduce an approach, leading in to a practical assignment that will be developed in subsequent seminars/workshops. Where possible completed assignments will be realised by the students themselves, either alone or working collaboartively in small groups. The use of Sibelius software may be required for some aspects of the module, as may DAWs and/or live electronic programmes such as Max/MSP or P-d, Youtube and Twitch.

The approach will be broadly-speaking "experimental", though in the present day situation of music making this covers a very wide range of styles.

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

1. An understanding of different contemporary approaches to making new music.
2. An appreciation of and understanding of the creative processes involved in a range of contemporary music and/or sound art practices
3. An awareness of the artistic, performative, and technological resources available to the contemporary composer/sound artist

Intended Skill Outcomes

1. Confidence in realising creative solutions to a range of different compositional and/or artistic challenges
2. An ability to work independently, through imitation and experimentation to realise individual projects
3. An ability to negotiate the creative complexities of collaborative work, within music/sound art or in collaboration with artists from other disciplines
4. An ability to critically evaluate, reflect upon, and take steps towards progessing as a creative artist in music or sound art
5. Appropriate deployment of technological means, where necessary, to successfully realise a creative project. This may include use of DAWS, Sibelius notation software, live electronics environmnets such as Max/MSP, Ableton Live, P-d, Youtube and Twitch.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Lectures will introduce projects, give basic starting skills, and outline conceptual and technical considerations.

Workshops provide supervised practical sessions, usually but not exclusively in small groups, supporting students experimentation and providing on-the-spot guidance. These may be delivered online synchronous, online asynchronous, or PiP depending on circumstances.

Student-led small group sessions afford experience in unsupervised collaboration, and also peer evaluation
independent study allows for indiviudal compositional projects, as well as preparation of assessed materials and scholarly research where relevant

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The two portfolios evidence completed work undertaken. Materials may include written scores, audio or video recordings of performances, or other suitable documentation to be agreed with module leader as projects develop.

Written aspects of the portfolio will be determined according to the nature of the different projects undertaken, and will evidence conceptual understanding, technical realisation (where appropriate) and contextual knowledge of repertoires associated with each project.

General Notes

Present-in-person teaching will include 50% of workshops and all lectures.
This module has more than the normal 33 hours contact time as it is a practice based module. This is essential to the learning and outcomes of the module, where the students must experiement and practice with different technologies together, which informs their own creative practice and learning.