Music BA Honours

Course content

What will you study on the BA Music?

You will have the opportunity to explore music technology, studio music production, sound art, and live computer sound transformation. You'll consider analysis analysis to learn the means and meaning of music. Concepts in music history will be discussed and contemporary music will be studied. You'll learn harmony, counterpoint, instrumentation, orchestration and musicianship, and you will learn to write and/or perform music convincingly in a range of styles.

What will yo​u gain?

As well as cultural capital gained through an in-depth knowledge of musical repertoires and practices, you will also acquire skills in original music composition, music performance and critical thinking. During your third year, you have the opportunity to propose a topic of your own choosing to investigate and explore, along with the guidance of an allocated supervising tutor.

Modules

This module helps to ensure that you have a broad knowledge of the fascinating Western music repertoires from 1300 to 2000. It includes a focus on popular music 1920-2000.

This module strengthens your knowledge of and facility with the construction and notation of tonal and 12-note harmony (the 'chemistry' of pitch) and counterpoint (the craft of combining melodies effectively). Musicianship skills are also developed to enable you to write down what you hear (in real life or from your imagination). 'Skeleton scores' are used to help you to discern musical lines from complex textures and so develop an 'X-ray ear'. The module is supported by short keyboard lessons for non-pianists. Scores are analysed to begin to see the different ways in which voices and instruments can work together to make music.

With practical work to test understanding, and run by experts, this module introduces you to the world of electronic music production. Aspects of how technology is used to make, change, develop and enhance sound through production and performance. The aim is to enable you to engage with most available music technologies so that you can feel comfortable with synthesis, sequencing, microphones, recording, acoustics, psychoacoustics, compression, mixing, equalisation and reverberation and editing, in the studio.

Through practical work, this module helps you to understand the complex relationship between original composition (in any style) and performance. There are lectures in instrumentation (learning about the families of instruments: woodwind, brass, percussion, other instruments and strings), orchestration, score presentation, form in music. Techniques for composing and directing different kinds of musical material are shared. Newly-composed and pre-existing materials are engaged with in collaborative surgeries. The module is backed up with instrumental lessons and/or composition tutorials.

The relationship between music and culture can be obvious, but seemingly intangible when objectified. This module shares with you, a range of theoretical frameworks including cultural studies and gender theory, to free your understanding of the ways in which these domains have been constructed and to help you develop skills to analyse such forms.

Here, you begin to put into further practice what you learned in Year 1. You will decide whether you are principally a composer, principally a performer or both, and be guided in the production of a substantial portfolio of composition and/or a recital of older and new music, to high standards and with recordings. Ensemble performance, rehearsal and direction is covered together with an optional introduction to conducting.

The world of media today serves to guide audience perceptions. How does an artist work with the press? Run by an expert practitioner, this new, optional module shows you how to improve your interviewing skills; how to approach reviews, features, biographies, the web and how to produce promotional materials – this with a view to becoming a full-time music journalist, or to use these skills as part of a portfolio career. The fascinating history of music journalism is also covered.

If you would like to pursue an interest in music technology introduced in Year 1, then this optional module gives you free rein to do so. This module takes electronic and computer music further, with practical investigations into the technical and aesthetic interrelationships between electronics and acoustic (mechanical) musical instruments. Through creative projects, you will respond to current issues and technical challenges in this rapidly changing field.

There are three (subjective) ways to understand music: as the composer/performer, as the audience or as the music 'itself' actually seems to be. You will be introduced to analytical techniques for 'dissecting' music, to bring new insights into its structure and functioning. These include Schenkerian, PC set, semiotic, structuralist and post-structuralist approaches. In this optional module, music is covered both in its own terms and in combination with other media.

Music can be dated according to its style, but what exactly is it about a music's style that ascribes it to particular periods and places? Skilled composers and performers today need to be very familiar with conveying musical styles convincingly, and able to jump confidently from one manner to another. A composer may need to write music persuasively for a media production set in 1764. A performer may need to adopt late Romantic performance styles for a computer game set in the 1930s. On this optional module you can work at composing and performing music in different styles, with guidance into understanding and using the techniques which were used at the time.

Many extraordinary things happened to music in the West during the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries. This module presents specialist studies of extraordinary, groundbreaking works, genres, repertoires, composer-thinkers and their related, musicological theories. Modernism, post-modernism, neo-modernism are all covered.

Middlesex is a special place to study music in that while being a discrete subject, Music has close ties with dance and theatre Arts within the Performing Arts department. This gives you an advantage on this optional module, of developing your own, guided, collaborative composition and performance projects in dance choreography, theatre, operatic work or music theatre. You'll be guided by critical and contextual studies to share relevant theory and repertoire. Projects result in filmed work which can potentially be used as future, demonstration material to help to secure future work.

If there is a topic you would like to study which has not been included in your programme or if you would like to pursue a subject which you have already engaged with in greater depth, then you can propose an 'independent' project in this optional module and will be allocated a tutor best placed to support you. Past independent projects have included conducting a show in London, organising a small music festival and developing online distribution strategies for music.

Do you want to be an imitator or a pioneer? This optional module is the final stage in the strand of performance and composition modules from Year 1. While first year develops theoretical skills and second year helps to develop practice, Year 3 focuses on guiding you into developing your own, individual voice as a performer and/or composer. You will work at solo and chamber ensemble pieces. There are opportunities for orchestral performance. Performers work towards a major recital (which can be public). Composers develop a portfolio of scores, with recordings which they have directed. There is no limit on the style in which you can perform or compose, though you will be challenged to demonstrate that you can engage professionally with the best of the last half-century of music making.

Notated scores are optional in this discretionary module which covers the history, aesthetics and developing practice of music for screen. This enables you to produce directly from the studio, or to use recordings of acoustic ('real') instruments (for which scores are needed). There are speed-crewing sessions with animation and TV production students. From an experienced tutor, you'll be taught how to synchronise music to picture, to 1/25th of a second accuracy, and the effects of this on your audience! Student work is often presented at preview cinemas in central London, which can attract attention. Middlesex has its own industry standard television production studio.

In university, you have a duty to be aware of your surrounding community and to take the initiative to improve it in positive ways. This new, optional module enables you to affect constructively the musical development of a community or individual. Facilitation techniques are explored to help you to develop sophisticated, creative, interpersonal skills. The module is designed to help to set you up to start working professionally in the sector or to undertake further study e.g. via PGCE or a community music Master's degree.

You can find more information about this course in the programme specification. Optional modules are usually available at levels 5 and 6, although optional modules are not offered on every course. Where optional modules are available, you will be asked to make your choice during the previous academic year. If we have insufficient numbers of students interested in an optional module, or there are staffing changes which affect the teaching, it may not be offered. If an optional module will not run, we will advise you after the module selection period when numbers are confirmed, or at the earliest time that the programme team make the decision not to run the module, and help you choose an alternative module.