• Offered for Year: 2025/26

• Module Leader(s): Professor Catriona Macdonald
• Lecturer: Dr Larry Zazzo, Dr William Edmondes, Dr Mick Wright

• Owning School: Arts & Cultures
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

Performing Music develops students’ individual skills in a model appropriate to their specific practice or genre. Through one-to-one instrumental or vocal lessons students expand their performance abilities and through small group activity consider the various challenges concerning technique and performance. Students consider technical and practical elements of various genres and styles, which might include experimental electronics, performance art, improvisation, jazz, classical, pop, folk, and turntablism. Students engage with issues pertinent to these styles and the historical and social contexts in which they developed. In short, the principle aim of this module is for students to expand and improve their musicianship for performance as supported by a critically and historically informed understanding of the genre.

Outline Of Syllabus

The syllabus is focussed on developing the student's individual skills in musical performance in a mode appropriate to their specific practice or genre. One-to-one instrumental or vocal lessons are supplemented by group classes each week in which various challenges concerning technique and public performance are discussed and worked through. These range from dealing with stage fright to finding solutions to various technical issues that arise during the study of musical performance. There is no restriction as to genre or style, and a wide range of specialist teaching is available, from experimental electronics, performance art, improvisation, jazz, classical, pop, folk, and turntablism. Students will be expected to fully engage with issues pertinent to the style in which they are working, such as Historically Informed Performance of early or Baroque musics, structured improvisation in Jazz, programming and virtual instrument design in live electronic practices. Commonalities across different performance traditions are encountered, but also tools to identify critical differences between practices. This helps to contextualise differences of approach, which feeds into the Semester 2 Collaborative Music Making module.

Students performing maybe be videoed in order to have concrete material to discuss with them, which may feed into their written exercise where they evaluate how they have addressed challenges in their practice.

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Workshops present repertoires, generic skills, and genre-specific knowledge in a classroom environment, sometimes incorporating practical exercises, listening session, or peer learning [K1, K2, K3, S3].

Project-related supervision consists of intensive one-to-one coaching on voice or instrument as appropriate for the student's particular performance practice [K1, K3, S2, S3].

Structured research activities are specific practical exercises, or interpretative challenges set by the one-to-one tutor, or from the workshop sessions [K2, S2, S3].

Skills practice is the essential ongoing individual practice on the student's voice or instrument necessary to build confidence and an ability to turn in assured performances in front of an audience. It also fosters and develops self-critical awareness [K2, K3, S1, S2, S3].

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Exams

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Assessment 1: Examined Music Performance (80%)
This is the principle mode in which expertise and interpretative acumen is evaluated in a module dedicated to musical performance (80%). Students are assessed against the following task specific criteria:
1.       Musical quality of performances submitted judged against relevant professional standards (K1; K3; S1; S2)
2.       The appropriateness of the presentation of materials for performers (K2)
3.       Creative imagination and interpretative skills (S1; S3)
4.       Technical competence as appropriate to the genre (S1).

Assessment 2: Written Exercise (20%)
The written introduction gives the student the opportunity to briefly account for the music presented and their understanding of its challenges and how they have addressed them. It should include brief programme notes on the music performed, and is presented to the examiners at the Performance exam as well as online via the VLE. Students are assessed on the following task specific criteria

1.       Knowledge of the genre and the student's work within that, where relevant (K1; K3).
2.       Ability to critically evaluate progress and quality of work and identify areas that need working on (S2; S3).
3.       Where the submitted work sits in the contemporary musical world (K2; K3).
4.       The effectiveness in communicating conceptual aspects of the submitted work not evident through simple listening (S2).

Reading Lists

• MUS8025's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• MUS8025's Timetable