MMus Composition (Electronic Music)

Course detail
The course is built around four core modules and two options. The core modules are Electronic Music Composition 1 and 2, Developing a Career and Interactive Music Technology. There is also a common Research Methods module in semester 1, which prepares students for their Project or Dissertation module over the summer.
Core modules:
Electronic Music Composition 1
Developing Your Career
Electronic Music Composition 2
Interactive Music Technology
Research Methods
Dissertation or Project.
Plus one option from:
Digital Audio Interface Design for Music
Advanced Recording Techniques
Performance in the Studio.
…and one option from:
Advanced Non-Linear Recording
Combining Sounds
The Development of Audio Technology
Manipulating Sounds
Multi-track Recording and Mixing for Surround.
Module summaries

Electronic Music Composition 1
The aim of the module is to develop advanced electronic compositional techniques, facilitating the learning of skills required of the contemporary professional composer. You will be taught both in groups and on a one-to-one basis by a composition tutor specific to your chosen area of specialist study. You will work towards submission of a portfolio of diverse compositional exercises that fulfils the requirements of the appropriate syllabus.

Developing Your Career
This module includes a series of lectures and tutorials designed to enhance your understanding of:
administration
communication
logistics.
These skills are required in the management and development of yourselves as an artist.

The module examines and investigates the current social and consumer trends of the industry and how to develop your commercial and entrepreneurial skills to meet industry requirement.

You will undertake one assignment focusing on the logistical planning, budgeting and marketing skills required to successfully promote either yourself or another artist, by way of problem-based learning, and investigative independent project on the administration, budgeting and promotional documentation.

Electronic Music Composition 2
The aim of the module is to consolidate and further develop advanced electronic compositional techniques, facilitating the learning of skills required of the contemporary professional composer.

Given the nature of individual composition studies, the exact content of learning sessions will depend upon your:
prior knowledge
experience
expertise.
Key areas covered within the module will be:
compositional techniques
idiomatic writing
programming
analysis
working to briefs
time management and self-evaluation.
Interactive Music Technology
An examination of contemporary, experimental composition techniques, sound art, interactive music and sound design. You‘ll be looking at composers from Aphex Twin to John Zorn taking in the likes of John Cage, Eno and Stockhausen on the way. After the brief tour of electronic and electroacoustic composition and multimedia installations, you will be creating and presenting your own experimental work at a public event at the end of the semester.

Research Methods
As preparation for research this module will require you to undertake a
number of tasks related to your discipline. These include:
a précis of an article
a critical commentary of two book reviews
your own book review
a proposal for your dissertation with an annotated bibliography.
Seminars will take place weekly in the first semester, with one-to-one supervision for the dissertation following thereafter.

Project or Dissertation
The dissertation module comprises an extended piece of written work of approximately 10,000 words. The subject is chosen by you in consultation with a supervisor. Other areas relevant to your interests may also be approved. Supervision will take place at regular intervals between late October/early November and late June.

The project allows opportunity to undertake an ambitious, substantial, self-managed practical project that expands and enhances both skills and knowledge acquired during the Masters course.

You can choose to pursue elements of the project throughout the academic year, but it is envisaged that the bulk of the work will happen over the summer period. You will be assigned a supervisor who can help guide the workflow, and will be responsible for the final assessment of the project.

Option modules:

Digital Audio Interface Design for Music
The use of computers and software-based systems is now highly important in many areas of music and audio technology. This module provides a practical introduction to the software design and programming techniques involved, primarily focusing on Max/MSP, a versatile object-oriented programming environment.

This module will introduce you to the wide variety of uses to which Max/MSP can be put, along with appropriate background theory, in areas such as:
MIDI and audio signal processing
Sequencing
Synthesis
Sampling
frequency domain analysis and signal processing
algorithmic composition
interfaces between computers and hardware control systems.
Advanced Recording Techniques
This module analyses how recordists 'capture' sound. It covers the history and theory of transducer design in addition to current and developing approaches to location and stereo/surround recording, including 5.1 and Ambisonics. We encourage you to conduct field test recordings of your own, and to experiment in practical studio sessions using the many techniques we discuss and the equipment we present to you.

Performance in the Studio
This module investigates the idea that musical performance for recorded output is very different to concert performance. A record producer not only has to be aware of these differences, but also of what is required and how to achieve it.
How do participants engage with one another?
How do they critically evaluate the process and results?
What methodologies and theoretical frameworks are there for studying these phenomena?
Alongside the technical issues of recording sound we will also inspect the psychological and interpersonal issues involved in creating the right atmosphere for the communal activity of creating recorded music.

Advanced Non-Linear Recording
To combat the rising threat of bland, sterile and conformist production ethos which tends to prevail our modern creative times, Advanced Non-Linear Recording (ANLR) presents an opportunity to explore production methodologies which blur the traditional boundaries of composer, musician, engineer and producer. You will research and (re)discover the modern Hi-Spec recording studio and the people who pioneered its use.

Technologies and topics considered:
Logic Pro Vs ProTools
mono to multiple-channel
implications and management of source selection
resolution
recording medium choices
processing in the analogue and digital domains
hardware integration with the virtual world
MIDI to MADI
manipulation of time and space
pitch-correction and spectral deviancy (their creative abuse and mastery).
All this will be brought together via a large-scale, self-directed practical studio production, working at high sample rates.

Combining Sounds
This module explores the process of combining sounds, from simplistic mono tape recordings through to multi-tracked, multi-channeled environments. Genres of music will be deconstructed focusing on the working practices and methods applied when combining and mixing sounds.

Practical studio sessions will provide a forum for experimentation and analysis of sound construction and multi-layering techniques. Distinctions and parallels will be evaluated as will the tactile and non-tactile differentials in methodologies. Technical and non-technical intuitive approaches will be examined alongside the linear and non-linear mixing methods in both stereo and surround sound.

The Development of Audio Technology
This module will involve you in the study of recording technology and the people who have used it. This will involve a survey of how these things developed over time from the beginning of the 20th century and also of how these developments varied geographically, socially and culturally.

Did, for example:
The spread of new technology occur at the same time in India as it did in Argentina?
How did the apartheid system in South Africa affect the production techniques used by black African artists compared to white artists?
Why have there been and continue to be so few women producers?
What kinds of methodologies should we use to study these things?
You will also investigate the debate over the difference between analogue and digital sound:
Is the issue of analogue tape recording substantially different to the question of analogue pre-amps (or analogue compressors and limiters for that matter)?
Is there such a thing as objective audio ‘quality’ or is this debate concerned purely with subjective matters such as perceived authenticity and aesthetics?
Manipulating Sounds
Techniques for manipulation of audio have transformed the recording process from one of simple documentation to the point where the recording studio (or now a computer) can be considered as an ‘instrument’ in its own right. Many contemporary forms of music owe their existence to the power of technology to edit, transform and recontextualise audio.

This module involves both theoretical and practical considerations of manipulating audio, examining the history, social significance and psychoacoustics of manipulation in a wide variety of musical styles and contexts, from dub reggae to glitch, from groove and rhythmic structures in dance music to spectomorphology in electroacoustic music. A wide range of techniques will be studied, from the traditional:
equaliser (eq)
Dynamics
time domain
frequency domain
timbral effects
to advanced techniques such as:
vocoding
FFT
Granulation
glitch and groove manipulation.
Multitrack Recording and Mixing for Surround
On this module you will explore:
5.1, 7.1, 10.2 channel surround and beyond
Surround monitor formats
recording and mixing hardware and software
tape and non-linear recording formats
console and screen recording and mixing options
surround capabilities of non-linear platforms
planning, starting and finishing a surround mix
surround audio processing
automation, media and output file formats
DVD authoring.