FdA Popular Music
Higher Education at The College is actively promoting Foundation Degrees to Industry. As these are vocational courses it is important for us to work in partnership with interested employers who can offer short-term student placements, sit on our advisory panels, or guest speak at a lecture. This continually serves to update the quality of the courses we can bring to our students and help to produce graduates with skills recognised and needed by Industry.
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Skills for the Professional Workplace
The Foundation Degree in Popular Music aims to produce musicians with the compositional, performance, technological, theoretical and business skills required to compete in the twenty-first century music industry.
The course focuses primarily on Rock and Pop of the past 50 years, though other styles of 20th and 21st century music (especially jazz) also play a part in the curriculum. All students are expected to be competent instrumentalists and/or singers: live performance is a central part of the programme. Composition and song writing are also essential components, with composing for film, theatre and dance being a particular strength of this programme.
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Work Placement
What makes a Foundation Degree distinctive to an employer is the vocational element of the course. Students are required to undertake a period of work placement within a relevant business to inform their classroom tuition with real Industry experience. This also allows employers to feed into our curriculum the skills they feel future employees of their Industry should have.
Getting Involved
This is a very important element of the course and The College is always pleased to hear from interested companies willing to take students for placement. It is an opportunity for Industry to play an influential role in determining the tuition we give our students so as to install in them the skills they really need for business. Find out how to get involved.
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Course Units Include:
Core Skills
To enable students to develop skills in music notation and theory, and to develop aural skills.
Music Technology
To provide students with an understanding of the many ways that technology impacts upon creation, recording and dissemination of music.
Critical and Contextual Studies
To introduce students to a variety of approaches in the study of Anglo-American Popular Music from 1955 to the present day.
Music Business Studies
To provide an overview of the established business structures and practices in the contemporary music industry.
Performance
To examine aspects of the styles, structures and aesthetics of music through performance, and to develop students' instrumental/vocal techniques in group and solo contexts.
Composing for Media
To provide students with an understanding of the many ways that music is used in film, television, radio, theatre and interactive media, as well as basic skills in composing for various media.
Song writing & Composing
To enable students to develop their own individual song writing styles, through the composition of a portfolio of songs and solo instrumental pieces. Also students gain a detailed knowledge of notational conventions for keyboards, guitars and drums, and of the production of lead sheets.
Musicianship Skills
To develop and improvising skills in a variety of different styles.
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