Undergraduate Music 2024-2025

This course will examine key ideas and methodologies in music studies, incorporating approaches from a range of ‘disciplines’ such as musicology, ethnomusicology, performance studies, music education and community music. We will discuss a diverse range of topics including: cross cultural definitions of music; the role of music in society; different methodological approaches to the study of music history; how music is learnt in different places and times; and the relationship between music, economics and technology. The course will draw on case studies from musics both within the ‘western’ canon (such as European art music and popular music), as well as musical traditions from across the globe.

This course will engage students in practical music making, developing skills in performing and composing. Students will receive 10 hours of tuition with a specialist instrumental / vocal tutor, and attend lectures on genre, performance style, composing / arranging techniques, rehearsal etiquette, and stagecraft.

In groups of 5-8 performers, students attend a series of rehearsal sessions, where they will plan and manage a group creative project, culminating in a 10-minute performance as part of a mini festival in December. 

Students will be expected to attend concerts, join an ensemble, and participate in occasional workshops.

Combining key components in digital technology and musicianship, Digital Musicianship encourages music students to acquire basic digital skills that will help them explore a wide range of music making in the 21st century, through skill building in the applications of technology to the discipline of Music. This hands-on, project-based course introduces basic knowledge in digital music technology, and key issues related to the music making in the 21st century.

Building on “Performing and Composing 1”, this course will guide students to developing their own range of interests in creative musical practice. Students will work towards a portfolio of creative outputs, which can include a range of compositions and musical arrangements, and recordings of solo / ensemble performances.

Students receive 10 hours of one-to-one tuition on their chosen instrument / voice, and attend lectures and tutorials focussing variously on issues related to performance, composition, and music technology.

In this course you will explore ways of writing and talking about music. Lectures will focus on recent work in music studies, showcasing the kind of scholarship you will encounter later in your degree. Tutorials will provide opportunities for experimenting in a range of formal and informal styles, working both individually and in small groups. By the end of the course you will gain a deeper understanding of both established writing conventions and emerging forms of multi-media communication.

 In this course, basic concepts of Western tonal music such as primary triads, cadences, idiomatic chord progressions, and voice leading are taught using exercises in harmonic analysis, figured bass, and part writing. More advanced concepts such as secondary dominants and chromatically-altered chords are also introduced. In parallel to lectures and seminars, students will work with software designed to reinforce key concepts such as clefs, intervals, key signatures, and scale structures.

This course focusses on student-led ensemble and solo performance. Students will receive 10 hours of tuition with a specialist instrumental / vocal tutor, and attend lectures on performance practice, style & genre, successful ensemble performance, practising, rehearsal etiquette, and stagecraft.

Students will be given the chance to present individual concepts for an ensemble performance project. Each successful bid will be allocated a group of 5-8 performers, who will develop each concept into a 10-minute public performance, as part of a mini-festival at the university in December.

Students must have achieved a CGS award of C3 or higher in performance at Level 1, 2HS in order to be able to progress to this course in year 2.

Students will develop a critical awareness of form and structure in music by studying various approaches to musical analysis. The course will draw on a range of analytical methods and musical genres, such as functional harmony and classical form, pitch-class set theory, rhetoric in music, and computer-aided analysis.

This ten-week course will introduce students to writing music. It will build upon skills learned in Performing and Composing and Introduction to Music Theory and Harmony and seek to apply some of these techniques in different compositional settings. Students will learn how to write different styles and genres of music, being assessed on two pieces of written music over the half-session.

This course offers students an introduction to the field of ethnomusicology, including the historical development of the field, how to conduct fieldwork and some of the field’s key theoretical perspectives. The course will introduce students to a range of musical traditions from around the world through case studies that demonstrate the close relationship between music, society and culture (topics include nationalism, colonialism, identity, race and globalisation). Teaching will take the form of lecture-seminars, reading group sessions and tutorials. The course also has a strong practical element where students will have the opportunity to conduct ethnomusicological fieldwork including ethnographic interviews.

The Emerging Musical Practitioner explores the similarities and differences between a range of philosophical and pedagogical approaches to engaging people and communities in music making. The course will explore a range of practitioner styles including Community Musicians, Music Educators, Music Therapists and Instrumental and Vocal Instructors.

This course focusses on solo performance. Students will receive 10 hours of tuition with a specialist instrumental / vocal tutor, and attend lectures on performance practice, interpretation, style & genre, practice regimes, managing performance anxiety, presentation and stagecraft. Students will be given opportunities to perform during performance lectures, receiving feedback from their peers and teaching staff, and honing their abilities to critique and evaluate performances. Students will work towards a 15 minute recital in May.

Ranging widely across space and time, this course introduces some of the reasons and methods for studying the musical past in a global context. Students will encounter case studies from across world history, with lectures summarising key topics and tutorials allowing for deeper discussion. Students will also consider how historical knowledge about music is itself the product of a global past and will be encouraged to question how we tell the stories of those who made music before us.

This ten-week course will introduce students to writing music. It will build upon skills learned in Performing and Composing, Introduction to Music Theory and Harmony and Writing Music I and seek to apply some of these techniques in different compositional settings. Students will learn how to write different styles and genres of music, being assessed on two pieces of written music over the half-session.

This course will explore practices and research from the fields of music, therapy, public health and medicine, to rigorously explore the relationship between music, health and wellbeing. 

The course differs from its 15 credit counterpart through its extended work in conjunction with NHS Grampians Public Engagement team in the design and implementation of music, health and wellbeing interventions.

Students will be expected to listen to, analyse and critique a prescribed list of electroacoustic compositions as well as demonstrating how this informs their own practice in one to one composition tutorials. Bi-weekly composition seminars will allow students to discuss their own work within the context of that of pioneers and established composers in a variety of genres drawn from electroacoustic music and sound art.

Two quotes provide an overarching provocation for this course:  

 ‘Every Community Musician believes they invented Community Music’ (Imry 2013, cited in Camlin 2015)

‘Good intentions are not enough to avoid bad results when you make art with people‘ (Matarasso 2019) 

This course is designed to explore and challenge what community music is and can be, and what it potentially means to each of us as individuals. Using the two provocations above as well as Kushner Walker and Tarr’s 2001 Publication Case Studies and Issues in Community Music the course will explore the practice of Community Music through rigorous academic study, and practice through observation and participatory lenses.

 

This course develops individual instrumental/vocal  skills.  Students work on one-to-one basis (20 x 1 hour lessons) with a specialist instrumental / vocal tutor on their principal study. Alongside instrumental and vocal lessons students are  encouraged to join one of the department's many ensembles working in weekly rehearsals towards high quality public performances. The course is assessed by a 20 minute recital, a tutor report and a performance essay.

Students must have achieved a CGS award of B3 or higher in year 2 in order to be able to progress to this course in year 3.

This course will build on knowledge and techniques studied and assimilated in earlier composition modules in order to create substantial, original new creations. Students will be required to assimilate new techniques and work them into their own emerging musical language for the assessment procedures. Students will be required to regularly critique existing works using these techniques and this will form part of the formative assessments.

Between 1909 and 1929, Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes staged a series of theatrical productions which combined music, movement and visual art in ways that were to have an unprecedented influence on every aspect of artistic life in western Europe and the Americas. Focusing on ten representative ballets, this course explores the creative collaborations between composers, choreographers, artists, dancers and musicians, including such key figures as Stravinsky, Debussy, Picasso, Chanel, Nijinsky and Massine. The course approaches the topic from interdisciplinary angles. 

‘Conductors give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.’ (George Szell)

Conducting is an interactive course designed to provide an Introduction to Conducting. The course will focus on the development of baton technique (focused on the communication of musical intent through gesture to the ensemble) as well as issues concerning ensemble set-up, acoustic consideration, repertoire selection, advanced score analysis and rehearsal techniques.

This course offers an excellent introduction to electronic music. Surveying not only early electronic music from academic and research institutions, but also more commercial and underground noise music scenes that have thrived over the last several decades since the 1980s, the compositional course offers students with an opportunity to delve into the world of beeps and blips, high pulse electronic noises or gently sweeping ambient soundscapes using contemporary music and sound technologies.

This course explores music’s relationship to place. Grounded in concepts of the music scene, cultural geography, psychogeography, and cultural policy, as well as music ecosystems and music cities literature, it examines the structure and function of place-based music industries and scenes, the ways in which music is leveraged in city planning, place activation, heritage, and tourism strategies and the urban governance and regulation of such activities. Its primary focus is contemporary music.

Students will be expected to listen to, analyse and critique a prescribed list of electroacoustic compositions as well as demonstrating how this informs their own practice in one to one composition tutorials. Bi-weekly composition seminars will allow students to discuss their own work within the context of that of pioneers and established composers in a variety of genres drawn from electroacoustic music and sound art.

This course provides each student the opportunity to design and implement a community music project of their choosing, working with and in a range of community partnership organisations in the Northeast of Scotland.

This course will entail research work which will contribute to musicological understanding (at undergraduate level). Students will research a topic of their own choice (subject to approval), demonstrating knowledge and understanding of their chosen subject matter in the form of a 10,000 word dissertation. 

As different cultures and nations have come into contact through European colonialism and globalisation, so too have their musics. In this course, we will approach the issue of cultural encounter through the prism of music, and music’s ability to represent and to bring into dialogue different cultural identities. ‘Music, Representation and Cultural Encounters’ will adopt a cross-disciplinary approach examining current scholarship in musicology, ethnomusicology and popular music studies. In the course, we will encounter a number of familiar (and not so familiar) repertoires and genres, including opera/western art music, jazz, popular music, Mediterranean and North African genres.

This course focusses on advanced performance, working towards a 30-minute public recital in May.

Students will receive 20 hours of tuition with a specialist instrumental / vocal tutor, and attend lectures on performance practice & interpretation, style & genre, writing programme notes, practice regimes, managing performance anxiety, presentation and stagecraft. Students will be given opportunities to perform during performance lectures, receiving feedback from their peers and teaching staff, and honing their abilities to critique and evaluate performances.

Students must have achieved a CGS award of B3 or higher in year 3 in order to be able to progress to this course in year 4.

The aim of this course is to allow promising student composers the opportunity to develop their own 'voice' by giving them a degree of creative freedom in what they produce. By the end of the course students are able to compose in a variety of genres, conveying a sense of structure and form in their music as well as working independently. Assessment is via a portfolio of compositions. Lasting c.20 minutes in performance.

Between 1909 and 1929, Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes staged a series of theatrical productions which combined music, movement and visual art in ways that were to have an unprecedented influence on every aspect of artistic life in western Europe and the Americas. Focusing on ten representative ballets, this course explores the creative collaborations between composers, choreographers, artists, dancers and musicians, including such key figures as Stravinsky, Debussy, Picasso, Chanel, Nijinsky and Massine. The course approaches the topic from interdisciplinary angles. 

This course will empower students to engage proactively with the complex social and political concepts, theories and perspectives around equality, equity and social justice. 

The first part of the course will develop a knowledge and understanding of the range of terminology, concepts, theories, and perspectives connected with this area of study, using the 2010 Equality Act as an overarching framework. This will be undertaken through the study of relevant academic literature and participatory activities.  

The second part of the course will demonstrate how these concepts, theories and perspectives can be applied to the student’s understanding of their individual musical practice(s).  

This level 4 course explores the integration of migrant musicians through an interdisciplinary lens. Drawing on research based on cases across the globe, students will examine how musical creativity could be directly related to the bolstering or the withdrawal of integration migrant musicians in a new cultural environment. Through a series of engaging and interactive sessions, this course explores the interwoven dynamics of diversity, inclusion and creativity.