MMus in Creative Practice

What you'll study Core modules

You choose one of the following modules:

Module title Credits. Compositional Techniques Compositional Techniques 30 credits

This specialist module is concerned with exploring diverse methodologies for the generation, manipulation and control of the various musical parameters with specific focus in the realms of pitch, rhythm and notation. No stylistic or technical orthodoxy is given particular emphasis, though the module content will necessarily be directed towards the developments of the last 40 years or so. Whilst systematic approaches will be discussed, these will not preclude a consideration of more intuitive methods and how these might be enhanced and extended through the application of more formalised techniques.

Work will concentrate not just on note-to-note generation but also on how the foreground details of pitch choice can be projected over the duration of a work. Specific techniques such as post-serial thinking, spectral composition, stochastic techniques and sieve theory will be examined. It is of module inadvisable, if not impossible, to isolate the element of pitch from other musical parameters, and thought will be given as to how aspects of register, timbre, pacing and rhythm alter our perception and treatment of raw pitch materials. The relationship between time signatures, rhythm, tempo and texture in relation to surface activity and fundamental structure will also be discussed as a means of articulating larger scale formal units and defining /shaping musical material.

Aspects of articulation, harmonic pacing, pulse and metre will also be discussed in relation to tempo and musical structure. The unit will enhance knowledge of specific rhythmic techniques including mensuration, modes, resultancy, metric modulation, isorhythm and the derivation of systems through manipulation of numerical and pitch patterns.

Lectures will address these questions through study of scores and writings of several composers, concentrating particularly on the works of Pierre Boulez, Harrison Birtwistle, Elliott Carter, Brian Ferneyhough, Gyorgy Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Stravinsky and Webern.

To take this module you should have: the ability to read advanced notation and scores; some knowledge of recent developments in contemporary ‘classical’ music and familiarity with the developments of 20th Century compositional thought from Webern to Boulez, Stockhausen, Ligeti etc.

Convenor: Roger Redgate

30 credits. Popular Music Composition Popular Music Composition 30 credits

This module will not be specifically dedicated to one area of popular composition (i.e. a specialist songwriting, or jazz studies module). Instead, this will be an ideas based module where the students will be presented with different approaches and creative strategies for making work. They can they use these to develop their existing strategies and indeed to try out new modes of practice in a safe and supported environment. It is expected that the student cohort will be experienced practitioners, each with an existing field of expertise and mode of practice (or multiple).

You will make use of the expertise of the existing Popular Music staff team but will also interact with guest VTs and one-off visiting experts. You will be presented with a lecture and set tasks and asked to generate work for an accompanying workshop the following week. New work is presented and discussed with the lecturer and peer group in a supportive forum.

The strategies covered will be drawn from (but also be applicable to) a range of popular music fields including songwriting, arranging, production/use of music technology, and improvisation.

30 credits. Studio Practice Studio Practice 30 credits

This module enhances your skills in a range of studio techniques and creative methods, supported by an understanding of related key concepts. These include recording, editing and mixing, field recording, spectral manipulation, sound synthesis and placement, and electroacoustic compositional methods.

The software used includes Pro Tools, Audiosculpt, and Metasynth. Special attention is given to multi-channel sound work using the EMS Multi-channel Studio and 5.1 Studio. Issues related to technology-based composition are explored, such as listening, spatialisation, transformation, site/location and context. This module includes an opportunity to collaborate with students taking theatre writing/performance modules.

To take this module you should be able to: 1. Demonstrate an understanding of the fundamentals of digital audio and studio-based production 2. Apply a good, working knowledge of a professional audio editor/mixer (eg. at least one of the following: Pro Tools, Logic, Digital Performer, Cubase) 3. Compose studio-based or electronic music that demonstartes an understanding of contemporary techniques and concerns

30 credits. Option modules

You choose three modules from a selection that currently includes:

Module title Credits. Analysing Contemporary Music: From Serialism to Spectral Noise Analysing Contemporary Music: From Serialism to Spectral Noise 30 credits

Contemporary music ain't what it used to be. Though always multifaceted and to some extent mongrel, the musical avant-garde is now more mixed and sprawling than ever before. And yet efforts to grasp these current tendencies within the field, as well as historical contexts, often remain stuck in bubbles of either analytical specificity or generalised postmodern speculation.

This module sets out to act as a corrective to both of these tendencies by balancing grounding analytical depth with historical and cultural breadth. Accordingly, lectures apply various analytical methods to a broad range of contemporary music both to unlock the music’s workings and to explore its position as a bridge to culture more generally speaking. The module encourages students to think about the historical development and expansion of contemporary music while using analysis to prise open broader interpretative and theoretical issues.

We focus in the first instance on post-tonal musical languages such as serialism, extended tonality and atonality. We then move on to examine proliferating styles from across the contemporary spectrum, including spectral music, sound art, noise, extreme metal, new conceptualism and improvisation.

30 credits. Audiovisual Composition Audiovisual Composition 30 credits

This production-centred module provides an introduction to audiovisual composition. It covers several theoretical and practical approaches as well as video production software and techniques.

Students will learn about the history of visual music and other cultural and historical contexts for audiovisual composition. They will analyse and discuss pieces of historical significance along with modern examples.

Finally, they will produce audiovisual work using the theory and examples discussed in class to inform their compositional strategies. Production techniques taught in the module will centre on video editing and processing, but will include other aspects of production such as filming and compression for various distribution formats.

30 credits. Composition and Moving Image Media Composition and Moving Image Media 30 credits

This module engages with practical and conceptual approaches to the composition of music for moving image media – film, television, games and other forms. Initial lectures will consider theories of multimedia and the aesthetics of film music, exploring the relationship of music and sound to the structure and content of film narrative. A lecture on technical issues related to synchronisation is followed by a paired sequence of lectures followed by show-and-tell workshops that will consider individual topics, with ensuing short exercises. These topics may include: dramatic scoring; music in games and new media; library music; sound design; experimental film and video; new approaches to silent film; found film and sound montage; et al.

To take this module you should have: competence in music technology programmes – Logic or Cubase or ProTools or Sibelius 5/6 or similar - sufficient to prepare mixed and mastered stereo audio files of media music cues/compositions.

Convenor: Ian Gardiner

30 credits. Compositional Techniques Compositional Techniques 30 credits

This specialist module is concerned with exploring diverse methodologies for the generation, manipulation and control of the various musical parameters with specific focus in the realms of pitch, rhythm and notation. No stylistic or technical orthodoxy is given particular emphasis, though the module content will necessarily be directed towards the developments of the last 40 years or so. Whilst systematic approaches will be discussed, these will not preclude a consideration of more intuitive methods and how these might be enhanced and extended through the application of more formalised techniques.

Work will concentrate not just on note-to-note generation but also on how the foreground details of pitch choice can be projected over the duration of a work. Specific techniques such as post-serial thinking, spectral composition, stochastic techniques and sieve theory will be examined. It is of module inadvisable, if not impossible, to isolate the element of pitch from other musical parameters, and thought will be given as to how aspects of register, timbre, pacing and rhythm alter our perception and treatment of raw pitch materials. The relationship between time signatures, rhythm, tempo and texture in relation to surface activity and fundamental structure will also be discussed as a means of articulating larger scale formal units and defining /shaping musical material.

Aspects of articulation, harmonic pacing, pulse and metre will also be discussed in relation to tempo and musical structure. The unit will enhance knowledge of specific rhythmic techniques including mensuration, modes, resultancy, metric modulation, isorhythm and the derivation of systems through manipulation of numerical and pitch patterns.

Lectures will address these questions through study of scores and writings of several composers, concentrating particularly on the works of Pierre Boulez, Harrison Birtwistle, Elliott Carter, Brian Ferneyhough, Gyorgy Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Stravinsky and Webern.

To take this module you should have: the ability to read advanced notation and scores; some knowledge of recent developments in contemporary ‘classical’ music and familiarity with the developments of 20th Century compositional thought from Webern to Boulez, Stockhausen, Ligeti etc.

Convenor: Roger Redgate

30 credits. Contemporary Ethnomusicology Contemporary Ethnomusicology 30 credits

This explores contemporary approaches in ethnomusicology. The focus is on contemporary theoretical issues in the field, although current concerns will be situated within the history of ethnomusicological discourse. The module will address a range of topics and issues, such as globalisation and diasporas, the “world music” phenomenon, ethics, urban ethnomusicology, cognitive approaches, musical experience and phenomenology, music technology, and issues of gender, sexuality, and ‘race’. During the module, you will gain familiarity with the connections between ethnomusicology and related disciplines such as anthropology, and with debates concerning disciplinary boundaries within music studies.

This module does not require prior knowledge of ethnomusicology.

Coordinator: Dr. Barley Norton

30 credits. Contemporary Music: Practices and Debates Contemporary Music: Practices and Debates 30 credits

This module traces just a few of the paths, among many that might be identified, tracked and evaluated, through late twentieth- and early twenty first-century musical cultures, focusing on some key repertoires and the debates which surround them.

The Modernisms of this period, however much their creators may have insisted on an aesthetic of rejection and beginning again from first principles, have their aesthetic, and even some of their technical, origins in early twentieth-century Modernisms, whether musical or emerging from other art forms and cultural practices. While the Postmodernisms that overlapped with, as well as succeeded, them are frequently associated with the blurring and even breakdown of previously-erected barriers between "High Art" and "Low Art", this module will attempt to assess the significance of such movements and musical phenomena as part of a continuing tradition of "serious", even "classical" musical endeavour: a tradition whose validity and success will receive consideration here.

"Modernism" and "Postmodernism" will be considered not only as they can be applied to cultural practice generally, but also as they may be held up as useful tools to understand the specific musical practices involved, and their influence on subsequent developments.

The methodologies examined and tested in this module include history (cultural as well as musical), cultural theory and musical analysis, and the extent to which at least certain of these might be combined.

To take this module you should have: some knowledge of the main currents of development in Western composed art music during the 20th century. It is possible to benefit from this module if your main musical experience lies outside the Western "classical" tradition; but in this case, in particular, it would be much easier to get a grasp of the module content if you had already read at least something by, if not necessarily the really "hard" theorists such as Adorno and Lyotard, then by, say, Bradbury or Jencks. By no means all such writers refer to music at all, but the application of some of their ideas to a wide range of music will form an important part of this module.

Convenor: Keith Potter

30 credits. Critical Musicology and Popular Music Critical Musicology and Popular Music 30 credits

This module will provide historical context by tracing the way in which popular music has posed problems for and also made a significant contributions to the development of musicology as a discipline. It will introduce students to key debates and issues, conceptual terms and methodological approaches and highlight the various intellectual legacies that feed into the study of popular music (such as the ‘discovery’, valorisation and study of the ‘folk’ and folk song; and the ‘critical theory’ of Adorno and the Frankfurt School seen as a response to commodification, the introduction of recorded sound and anxiety about ‘mass culture’; the cultural politics associated with the ‘counter-culture’ and ‘new social movements’). The module will highlight how the development of scholarly debates about popular music has been informed by interdisciplinary dialogues, an embracement of ‘the popular’ as a political project and the gradual institutionalization of popular music studies within the academy.

To take this module you should have: Prerequisite skills: a general awareness of theoretical debates about popular music; a familiarity with various styles of popular music and musicians; an ability to write in a critical and analytical manner.

Coordinator: Professor Keith Negus

30 credits. Ethnographic Film and Music Research Ethnographic Film and Music Research 30 credits

This examines the uses of ethnographic film/video in music research and enables you to develop the practical, technical and theoretical skills necessary to make your own short ethnographic film on a music topic in a critical and self-reflexive manner. Through a critical reading of key ethnographic films about music, you will address questions of aesthetics, representation and ethics that arise in the process of filmmaking. You will also consider the use of digital media in musical ethnography more generally and assess the methods of analysis afforded by the visual documentation of music practices. In complement with theoretical seminars, practical workshops on the methods of digital video recording and editing will familiarise you with a variety of approaches to ethnographic filmmaking and techniques of sound recording.

For this module you will develop skills in filming using video cameras and editing using Final Cut Pro. However, it does not require you to have prior experience of filming and film editing.

Convenor: Dr. Barley Norton

30 credits. Interactive and Generative Music Interactive and Generative Music 30 credits

This course explores creative and technical approaches to the design of computer music systems for interactive performance, composition and/or installations in audio and audiovisual practice. The principal software used is Max (Max/MSP/Jitter), however students are welcome to use other environments for generative and interactive processes in addition to or in the place of Max. A number of fundamental methods for real-time computer music are investigated, including digital signal processing, synthesis, gesture-following and machine learning. Various paradigms of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and audiovisual interaction are explored using a range of performer interfaces, within software environments and using external devices. Music Information Retrieval (MIR) and gestural control of electronics are introduced, while the paradigm of 'computer-as-creator' is explored as well using algorithmic and generative methods, including stochastic and artificial intelligence (AI) -related approaches. Students develop a creative project that explores the compositional and musical possibilities of working with real-time systems, leading to live workshop presentation or performance.

To take this module you should be able to: 1) apply good IT skills and knowledge of the Mac OS; 2) demonstrate understanding of the fundamentals of digital audio; 3) demonstrate knowledge of studio or notated composition, and/or improvised music and/ or contemporary music performance; 4) use and edit basic Max/MSP patches.(students are recommended to familiarise themselves with Max prior to the course; Max is installed in all Music computer labs and the EMS studios, and a free 30-day demo is