BA (Hons) Songwriting and Music Production

You’ll develop the skills associated with leadership and self-development and social and ethical awareness and responsibility, which are essential for success in higher education and in the world of work. This module will prepare you for successful progression to Level 4 academic study while allowing you to learn about employment in the twenty-first century through inquiry-based learning, problem solving and critical and creative thinking.  

You'll be taught how to examine the range and role of music and entertainment organisations responsible for the management and administration of the industry, and key issues they currently face. You'll look at artist management, record and publishing companies, copyright and collection societies, retail, streaming, broadcast, social media and DIY culture.

You'll study the relationships between equipment, environment and operational procedures involved in audio production in a multi-track recording studio. You'll explore approaches to audio and music production and the history and practices of producers, engineers and composers in popular music and more experimental sound art scenes and how they cross genres.

This is an advanced exploration of songwriting and composition in relation to popular music. We'll help you learn to identify characteristics and conventions of popular music genres and how to combine these to create novel variations in your songwriting craft, through case studies and practical workshops. You'll compose two original songs for assessment.

You'll study historic and current developments of publishing practice and legal principles underpinning today's music industry, including examining the creative, financial and business roles within music publishing. You'll study collecting societies, copyright law and publishing contracts with practical application to the music and entertainment industry.

The module aims to give you the knowledge to become self-employed in the music/events/entertainment industries. You'll study concepts and techniques relevant to content-driven businesses, such as marketing, promotion and potential income streams, to evaluate the success of contemporary small business practices. You'll also consider approaches to constructing and presenting a business proposal. There will be opportunities to engage in collaborative client-based live briefs.

This module will give you a thorough understanding of the fundamental topics needed to manage projects within a complex and ever-changing environment. You’ll develop a deeper understanding of both theoretical and practical aspects of project management and gain the essential skills necessary to plan, monitor, control and deliver successful projects.

You'll study advanced song-writing techniques and have the chance to develop the skillset required to flourish in the current music industry. You'll carry out harmonic analyses of existing songs and apply theoretical approaches to produce original work, investigate different ways to structure songs, explore creative methods to write and develop lyrics, and learn how to enhance basic song templates with melodic accompaniments, such as strings and brass instruments. We'll help you learn how to combine these conventions to create variation within your songwriting craft, through further case study examples and practical workshops. You'll also investigate the use of modern music production software as compositional tools to aid their practice.

You'll study the role of Artists and Repertoire Managers in content focused music business, including how they acquire, deliver, control and develop the content. You'll look at how these considerations are governed by the commerce vs creativity contradictions in commercial cultural industries and examine case studies of A and R across the music business.

In this project-based module you'll use the advanced technical resources at BNU to work alone or as part of a group to design and develop a performance of your own composition, acquiring new skills and honing those learned at Levels 4 & 5. You'll consider performance concepts utilising medium to large scale live production techniques including MIDI and pre-recorded, sequenced elements. You'll be supported by technical demonstrations, supervised time in studios, rehearsal spaces and performance spaces in addition to self-guided learning overseen by your tutor. There will also be tutorials to help your progress. A technical rider and detailed report will support a logbook and form part of the final submission along with a visual representation of the performance and a mixed and mastered recording.

This module introduces intellectual property law and how critical it is to the economic structure of the music and entertainment industries. Set against the framework of the legal system in the UK, you'll study copyright, trademarks, design rights and allied areas of intellectual property law, as well as the Copyright Designs & Patents Act 1988 and Trade Marks Act 1994.

This module also introduces contract law, actions for breach of contract and remedies for breach of contract. The second element of the teaching of the legal framework will be to focus on competition law and how this impacts on the monopolistic nature of copyright and other intellectual property rights as well as the regulatory impact on the different areas of music industry including the sound recording sector, music publishing and the live events sector.