Popular Music BA(Hons)

Modules

Playing Live: Songwriting & Performance

Working in an environment that nurtures creativity, critical listening and collaboration, you’ll work in groups to write, arrange and perform new material – developing your skills in live performance, enhanced musicianship and songwriting along the way. 

Pop Synthesis: Technology, Songwriting & Performance

In this module, you’ll explore the possibilities of writing and performing with technology. You'll be encouraged to push the boundaries of your style and sound by integrating hardware and software instruments into your current musical approach.

Expanding Musical Vocabularies

This module will introduce you to a range of musical terms, theories, techniques and notations before helping you to apply them in creative and practical scenarios.

Specialist Music Practice 1

In this module, you will increase your knowledge and skills in your area of specialist practice and develop co-creation, collaborative and communication skills through collective music making and studio practice sessions. 

Music and Sound: Context and Cultures

You’ll examine key concepts and debates in music and sounds studies whilst thinking critically about the relationship between music, sound, and culture.

Studiocraft

You'll learn to record, edit, mix and master audio in a recording studio environment using microphones, audio interfaces, mixing desks and digital audio workstations (DAWs).

Modules

Professional Creative Artist & Songwriter

In this module, you’ll gain a core practical understanding of popular music as both craft and commercial exercise. You’ll apply methods and approaches used in commercial and artistic ventures within popular music to a project brief.

The Business of Music & Sound

You’ll be introduced to intellectual property regulations and the subsequent risks of exploitation across the creative industries. You’ll learn the necessary business skills to work sustainably within the music and sound sectors with confidence.

Specialist Music Practice 2

Building upon the work undertaken in the Specialist Practice 1 module in your first year, you will continue to increase your knowledge and skills to further develop co-creation, collaborative and communication skills through collective music making and studio practice.

Music & Sound: Resonant Futures

In this module you will question and explore the relationship between music, sound, technology, context and culture in ways that seek to imagine and speculate on the future of music and sound.

Optional modules

Enterprise: Innovative Music Business Practice

Within the context of the ever-changing and shifting music business, this module enables you to approach your practice with agile, innovative, sustainable and ethical business skills and knowledge; from legal to financial, marketing to planning. 

A/V Radical Artistry & New Media Aesthetics

This module unleashes the potential of multimodal creation, encouraging you to re-imagine your artistic identity by exploring the rapid acceleration and monumental shifts of the contemporary media landscape. You will explore the dynamic creativity of social media, vlogging, AI, TV, music videos, advertising, and graphic design.

Composing Music for Media

You’ll develop a critical understanding of music-image relationships and conduct practical work across a range of media. You’ll also enhance your composition and production skills through being shown industry-standard workflows and techniques.

Session Musicianship

In this module, you’ll develop an understanding of the skills, techniques, communication methods and working practices of session musicians in a variety of genres and contexts.

Immersive & Interactive Audio

You’ll be introduced to a range of technologies, techniques and applications of immersive and interactive audio. The module is highly interdisciplinary and relevant to film sound, game audio, digital arts and experience design.

Advanced & Experimental Performance

This module aims to develop your abilities in the art of musical communication, flow, interpretation, expressivity, experimentation and versatility in performance. You’ll be introduced to improvisational and creative techniques to advance your practical skills and ideas.

Resounding: Situated Songwriting & Composition

This module encourages you to think about how your practice is entangled with various places—geographic, imaginary, speculative, utopian, abstract and psychological. You’ll be introduced to new critical frameworks and artists who process complex issues like the Anthropocene, the internet, dark ecology and the climate crisis through their music.

Voice and Listening: Life, People and Planet

The module will develop your vocal and listening skills alongside your creativity and in relation to an increased awareness of concepts in voice studies and relevant contemporary social, political and environmental themes.

You can choose to take an optional professional placement after your second year on a three-year programme, or after your third year if you’re studying for a degree with an Integrated Foundation Year. 

You’ll be responsible for finding your own placement, with support from the Employability team. 

Choosing this option will enhance your industry experience and skills while studying. 

How you’ll study during your professional placement 

You’ll spend time working in a professional context, as part of a business or organisation. This can be in one role, or up to three, and must be for a minimum of 24 weeks. 

You’ll develop in-demand workplace skills, deepen your insight into industry and grow your network of contacts, all of which could help you get ahead in your career after graduation. 

Throughout this year, you’ll develop a portfolio of work that includes critical self-reflection on what has been learned from the experience. You’ll be required to evidence your experiences, the skills you’ve learned and your professional growth. 

Your final year is geared towards refining your artistic and professional identity, while deepening your knowledge, skills and networks in line with your chosen specialism. You’ll develop your showcase portfolio, enhance your entrepreneurial practice skills and carry out career design work as you prepare to embark on a successful and creative profession in your chosen field. 

Modules

Music & Sound: Dissertation

In this module you will expand on your music and sound subject-based intellectual skills developed in your first and second years through an independently-driven written research project.

Professional Development

This module enables you to continue developing your specialist skills, contextual knowledge, experience and entrepreneurial mindset in preparation for the Showcase Portfolio module, careers and/or artistic practice beyond your degree.

Your Future 

This module enables you to understand, develop, practice and analyse skills pertinent to your chosen career path in sustainable ways; both now and in the future. You will further develop legal, financial, marketing and digital skills that relate to specialist areas of the music sector and be able to critically analyse trends and future opportunities that relate to your career.

Showcase Portfolio

This module is the culmination of your practice during your degree. You'll produce, showcase and evaluate a professionally and artistically competent and research informed portfolio of creative work.

On this Popular Music degree, we combine creative practice and critical thinking to help you carve out your unique sound and artistic identity. You’ll learn through a combination of lectures, seminars, group and individual tutorials, and practice-based workshops and masterclasses. You’ll also explore future career aspirations and gain professional practice skills by collaborating on group projects, taking on live briefs and getting industry insights from practicing professionals.

At Falmouth, we use a 'digitally enhanced learning & teaching' approach. Your experience will always be predominantly in-person, including seminars, tutorials and studio teaching, with some, more targeted elements, being online either live (synchronous) or pre-recorded (asynchronous). You can read more here.

All modules involve varying degrees of student choice, allowing you to design projects and tailor assessment tasks to benefit your development and future aspirations. Assessment methods may include:

• Portfolio   
• Studio practice and performance 
• Journals, case studies, essays and reports 
• Dissertation  
• Presentations 
• Viva (oral assessments)