• Offered for Year: 2025/26

• Module Leader(s): Dr Mariam Rezaei
• Lecturer: Dr William Edmondes, Dr Rob Mackay, Professor Catriona Macdonald, Dr Bennett Hogg, Dr Larry Zazzo, Ms Nancy Kerr Elliott

• 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

Developing Your Musicianship extends student learning from MUS8025 or MUS8026, identifying where students need to focus on their individual musical development, and how to creatively collaborate with other musicians (and potentially other artists) to devise, rehearse and publicly present a portfolio of projects. This may involve live performance, a produced recording, or audiovisual presentation, depending on the nature of the projects undertaken. Students gain insight into group creativity, and how to work with the demands of group music making, how to develop their own practice further, and to adopt appropriate leadership roles, or supporting roles, within a group project. Learning to sculpt the group sound by paying attention to timing, balance, interpretation and creative decision making is an essential set of skills that the module develops. Individual artistic development is informed by the collaborative experience, and skills developed through collaboration feed back into students' individual musical development. In short, the aim of this module is to develop as professional musicians through bringing ambitious projects to public presentation.

Outline Of Syllabus

Collaboration is an essential aspect of music making that develops groups skills as well as encouraging further development of individual musical abilities and creative potential. An important aspect of the module is to bring students together to work collaboratively with one another on a project that they devise and develop as a group. Students will, in parallel, also develop their individual musicianship and creativity in one-to-one or small group settings. The precise groupings and project ideas are developed in collaboration with the students each year. Choices and decision about each year's projects are informed by students' semester 1 achievements, and their emergent interests in terms of repertoire, communities of practice, and skill. In some cases, this may be a project where one musician accompanies another, in others where composers and performers collaborate on a joint new musical project, or where a group of musicians decide to form a band.

A significant aspect of the module is an emphasis on making music together, learning to collaborate, sometimes to lead, and discovering the complex social and creative processes through which humans make music. Students also attend the series of free lunchtime concerts, and afternoon student concerts in King's Hall every week to get a broad perspective on professional levels of creativity, technical skill, interpretation, and presentation.

The areas of musicianship and collaborative working covered on this module may include:
- accompaniment roles
- arranging
- composers working together with performers
- group rehearsal and leadership skills
- developing individual musical skills
- developing appropriate technical skills for the group context
- finding appropriate applications of existing musical skills
- collective interpretation
- effective and professional presentation of work
- observation of professional musicians in concert across a wide range of style and genres

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Workshops incorporate performing, composing, and critical listening to try out possible collaborative ideas. Each week project work is set that gradually encourages students to develop and stretch themselves. Workshop exercises initiate and cultivate collaborative skills, give a forum in which to try out ideas, receive peer feedback, and build confidence [K1, K2, K4, S1].

Project work is set each week to consolidate skills learned in workshops, and also to develop confidence and creativity [K2, K4, S1, S2].

Student-led group activity gives students greater freedom to bring their own ideas to the collaboration, and to develop more creative independence [K1, K2, K4, S1, S2].

Project-related supervision for performance strand students consists in one-to-one lessons with instrumental or vocal teacher. For composition students this is one-to-one tutorials with the composition supervisor [K2, K3].

Fieldwork consists of attending weekly free lunchtime concerts in King's Hall, this exposes students to a range of different musics and their attendant performance and presentation standards, as well as expanding knowledge of repertoires and ways in which musicians creatively develop their music and curate its public presentation [K3, K4, S3].

Skills practice covers the ongoing practice with voice or instrument for performance strand students, or regular compositional/improvisational activities for composition strand students, as well as strategizing input to the project work and student-led group activity according to individual capabilities and creative needs [K2, K3, S2, S3].

Assessment preparation consists of focussed rehearsals and/or recording, score publishing, setting up sound installations, building web presence, etc. for the public dissemination of the results of the collaborations [K2, K3, S1, S2, S3].

Assessment Methods

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

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Assessment 1: Creative Project (80%)
The design or creative project showcases the creative results of the collaboration. Students negotiate the specific parameters of their performance with the tutor. The task specific assessment criteria are as follows:
1. Quality and professionalism of the final presentation, be that some form of recorded musical work (an album, for example) or a live performance (K1; K3; S1).
2. The effectiveness of the arrangement, composition, and/or production values of the project appropriate to the genre (K3; K4).
3. Musical coherence of the live performance and/or recording in terms of intonation, timing, dynamic balance, etc. (K3; S4).

Assessment 2: Report (20%)
The critical reflection report allows students to discuss their role in the process, the challenges confronted and their resolution, as well as giving conceptual insight into the artwork or performance that was created. It is assessed against the following task assessment criteria.
1. Critical reflection of the process of collaborative group work, its challenges and their resolution (K1; K4).
2. A convincing account of the creative role that the student has played in the project (K2; S2; S3).
3. Conceptual or other aspects of the project not immediately communicated by "the music itself" (S4).

Reading Lists

• MUS8031's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• MUS8031's Timetable